


Paths of Divergence

by rebooting



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-15
Updated: 2019-05-19
Packaged: 2019-06-10 19:53:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 24,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15298836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rebooting/pseuds/rebooting
Summary: When Whitestone falls, two de Rolos survive. One escapes, and one remains a prisoner. That much is the same, and so is much of the rest of Vox Machina's story.However, the de Rolo who remains captive in Whitestone this time is Percy, and the escapee is Cassandra, and that changes things. Vox Machina don't find a gunslinger in that prison cell, but an angry young woman with a mission. For the Briarwoods, dealing with Percival as their pawn is subtly different to dealing with Cassandra, and breaking him goes in different directions than breaking her would have. And Cassandra, while not making deals with demons, has her own way of handling her need for vengeance.





	1. I'm strong on the surface, not all the way through

**Author's Note:**

> Content notes for this chapter: lots of violence, torture both physical and psychological, sexual threats and some menacing.

Percy was seventeen when his naivety died in the prisons beneath Whitestone Castle.

His parents had never used the cells for much. The odd troublemaker here and there, held awaiting trial, but nothing _serious_. They'd wanted to be _good_ rulers, understanding of the people's troubles, approachable and easy to deal with.

Maybe that had been their downfall. A less approachable family wouldn't have been taken so by surprise by the Briarwoods.

Percy hadn't paid much attention to the Briarwoods' arrival, except for some cursory curiosity during the traditional introductions. Julius and Vesper had been keenly interested - Julius had been intensifying his study into statesmanship and diplomacy in the last few years, and Vesper was always curious about newcomers to the really somewhat isolated Whitestone - but Percy had been busy with a new engineering treatise and had only really noted that the lady was beautiful and stately, the lord strongly-built and charismatic, and their attendants as ordinary as any other noble's hangers-on.

The one member of their entourage who _did_ capture his interest had been introduced as Dr Anna Ripley, and _that_ had been interesting - Percy didn't meet so many people with the right to call themselves _Doctor_ that the experience just floated on by without remark. She'd been seated close enough to him during the feast that he'd been able to inquire about her expertise, and she'd let drop some tantalising hints about biology and chemistry before things had gone horribly wrong.

At first, when he woke in the cell, it was difficult to remember where he was. The vivid, nightmarish scenes of brutality that he recalled were so impossible that for a moment, he thought he was still asleep, that he was having some bad dream spurred by the histories of deception and conquest that Julius had been reading.

Dr Ripley stood at the door to the cell, watching him - not _sleep_ , because Percy knew enough about biology to know that unconsciousness wasn't the same as true sleep, but it was unsettling to realise she'd been watching him, all the same. He remembered, with a sharpness that sent an almost physical pang through him, struggling in the grip of one of the Briarwoods' men-at-arms while Ripley put a knife through Ludwig's heart with the same ease and casualness that she'd put it through her steak not ten minutes before. She might have an impressive intellect that had caught his curiosity at first, but it was becoming plain that there was something deeply disconcerting beneath the surface.

"Welcome back, Percival," she said quietly, as calm as though they were having a completely normal chat. "I think it's time you were shown the reality of your situation."

Percy dragged himself upright, trying to ignore the ice settling in his stomach. More images rushed in - Julius falling to Lord Briarwood's sword, Whitney taking a blade in the throat as she shoved Oliver out of the way, Cassandra grabbed and grappled by a huge man-at-arms. What had happened to his parents and Vesper, he couldn't recall. Whatever it was, it had happened after he'd been knocked out.

"Whitestone belongs to the Briarwoods now," Ripley said, watching him struggle to his feet with amusement glinting in her eyes. "You can fall into line, or you can be destroyed. I'd _really_ suggest proving that you're as intelligent as your parents seemed to think you are."

"Whitestone will never belong to murderers," Percy spat.

Ripley laughed. "You believe that, don't you? You think your ancestors never murdered anyone to get their land and titles? You're such an innocent."

"Anna." A deep, sonorous voice came from the entrance to the cells, as Lord Briarwood stepped into the area. "Stop playing with your food."

For some reason that Percy couldn't divine, that amused her. She took a step back to let Lord Briarwood approach, murmuring, " _Is_ he food or is he a tool, though?"

"That all depends on him." Lord Briarwood smiled, and Percy's gaze was transfixed by the flash of bright, sharp fangs. Why hadn't he noticed them before? He swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry, as Lord Briarwood's eyes fixed on him, feeling as though the world was shrinking down into just this space and the two of them. Even Ripley's presence seemed muted.

"Percival." His name in Lord Briarwood's mouth sounded like an incantation. "My wife and I very much regret everything that's had to happen up until now. I'd like to be able to tell her that we can keep _one_ of you alive. So tell me. What are you able to do?"

Percy swallowed again, feeling an odd pressure at the edges of his mind, telling him to be honest with Lord Briarwood, to be _helpful_. He shoved that thought away. This man - _creature_ , if the fangs were anything to go by - was responsible for the slaughter of Percy's family. There was no way in any of the hells that he was going to be _helpful_.

Lord Briarwood sighed and took a step back, gesturing languidly to Ripley. "He's recalcitrant, and there's too much turmoil for Delilah and I to devote ourselves to properly undoing him. You can go ahead."

He turned to leave, and Ripley's smile brightened as she looked at Percy. As the door closed behind Lord Briarwood, she leaned in close to the bars and said quietly, "You should have cooperated with him, boy."

She was intelligent; he'd known that already. Over the next few days, he had a few moments, in between unconsciousness and agony, to acknowledge that her intellect came with a wide streak of creativity, something that a lot of intelligent people lacked. Percy's father had been intelligent but uncreative, and while he'd been a good ruler, Percy had found that missing spark had got in the way of their being really _close_. And now there was no chance for it.

She had questions, mostly about what he was studying. Things he'd have gladly told her not a week ago, had she just asked at the feast. But she seemed to be more interested in the process of questioning than the answers. She _did_ seem curious about his clockwork experiments, spending almost an entire day on those, meticulously peeling the skin from his non-dominant hand and forearm while she quizzed him about things she'd had brought down from his workshop. Stupid little trinkets, things that had no real value beyond uniqueness. Nothing that was _important_.

Later, her questions turned to the sciences that he'd been studying, asking what he knew about chemistry, biology, physics. She'd moved to his back by that point, digging the tip of her blade into his skin and dragging down as she asked how far he'd progressed into his chemistry studies, whether he'd started doing practical experiments into the properties of various chemicals. He had, but he didn't keep those chemicals out in his workshop; she wouldn't have been able to find them on a cursory search.

Maybe it wasn't an important line of questioning, but Percy held his silence for as long as he could anyway. Any questions she asked must have a purpose, and he didn't want to disgrace his family's memory by just spilling his guts because he was in a bit of discomfort.

After she left one night, Percy dozed, grasping for what sleep he could; he'd break sooner if he didn't take what care he _could_. He startled awake when the sound of metal scraping against metal reached him, and he turned to stare at the door to his cell, where his youngest sister, Cassandra, crouched with a handful of hairpins, working at the lock.

"Shush," she whispered, glancing up and seeing him looking at her. "I've almost got it, but we have to be quiet."

She looked _terrible_ , but Percy imagined he didn't look much better. She was still wearing the formal dress that she'd been wearing at the feast, but it was ragged and stained with things than Percy didn't want to examine. Her fingers shook for a moment as she manipulated the hairpins, and then she shook her head sharply and focused, and after a moment more of work, the lock clicked open.

"Come on," she said, still barely above a whisper. "Ripley and Anders are going to be up soon, but daybreak's safer than night. We have to go now."

Percy nodded, scrambling to his feet and joining her on the other side of the cell, ignoring the protests from his battered body. He reached out with his good hand and gave Cassandra's shoulder a quick, firm squeeze; she looked back at him and managed a shaky smile.

"The escape tunnel," he said, glancing around them. "It's not far from here. Who else did you find?"

Cassandra's chin wobbled for a moment, and then she said, "There's nobody else, Percival. Just us, now."

Ripley had told him as much, but he'd put off thinking about it, telling himself that she'd use anything to break him. But Cassandra wouldn't be lying. She'd have no reason to.

This early in the morning, the castle was quiet. There were usually servants about, but in the wake of the Briarwoods' betrayal, it seemed as though normal operations had been suspended; Percy and Cassandra made it to the storeroom that held the entrance to the secret passage without being interrupted, without even encountering a single servant. Percy's heart ached for the loyal servants who must have been cut down, from the dried smears of blood evident on the walls and floors, but there was no time to cry for them, or for the rest of his family. Survival was all that mattered right now.

The alarm wasn't raised until they'd left the castle proper. They should have suspected, Percy realised as a shout went up and dogs began baying; the Briarwoods wouldn't have been able to take the castle without some support from the town, and that meant that none of Whitestone was safe for him or his sister now. When the sounds of pursuit arose, they began to run.

Running _hurt_. Sweat stung in the still-raw wounds on Percy's body, and he could hear Cassandra's breathing grow heavy and panicked. He risked a glance behind them and felt a jolt of fear run down his spine at the sight of armed men following, bows already drawn.

Turning to look behind them was his undoing. One of the men let out a shout, and they loosed their bows. Percy felt frozen in place as he watched the arrows fly, unable to try to get out of their way.

The impact of several arrows hitting his chest, and the sound of Cassandra screaming his name, jolted him out of his frozen reverie, although not quickly enough to prevent him from falling to the dew-wet grass, gasping in pain as the landing jarred the arrows. His vision turned black for a moment, his body too beaten to withstand any more, and when it cleared, it was still shaky and greyed out.

He saw Cassandra, tears on her face, turning and running.

He saw the men approaching, bows ready to loose again, looking down at him. Most of them seemed uncertain, and one said something to the man who seemed to be their leader; Percy couldn't make out what, above the thudding of his heart in his ears. The leader nudged him with the toe of his boot, and that tiny movement was enough to send another shaft of pain through him, blackening his vision again.

He woke, briefly, to the light scent of perfume and the sound of a woman's voice.

"He lives or dies at your discretion, Keeper." She made the honorific an insult, somehow. "The last de Rolo requires healing that my husband and I are ill-versed in, and we've yet to acquire an appropriate healer. The decision is yours."

Breathing hurt. He could feel something in his lungs that made his breath bubble in his throat, making it impossible to take a full breath.

"Lady Briarwood." That was Keeper Yennin, and Percy felt his brow furrow at the sound of the Keeper's voice, rough and pleading. The Keeper shouldn't sound like that. He tried to open his eyes, to sit up, but his body wasn't cooperating, wasn't willing to do anything but feel pain. Keeper Yennin pleaded, "You can't-"

"I can do what I wish," the woman - Lady Briarwood, Percy realised vaguely - interrupted. "You have ten seconds to decide."

It seemed like a lot more than ten seconds passed before Percy felt gentle hands touching his shoulder and hip, and the warmth of divine magic. He felt dampness dropping into his face, one drop hitting his lips and tasting of salt, and as the divine magic bathed him and began to soothe the pain away, Keeper Yennin whispered, "Forgive me, Percival."

When he woke next, the Keeper was gone, and he was in a bedroom, not a cell. Not _his_ bedroom, but one of the quarters reserved for high-status guests. Whatever magic Keeper Yennin had been allowed to do on him, it hadn't fixed everything - his body still ached, and he felt weak enough that just sitting up was difficult - but he could breathe properly, and the skin had regrown on the hand and arm that Ripley had flayed.

He'd been awake less than five minutes when the door opened and Lady Briarwood entered the room, carrying a tray. She smiled when she saw him watching her, and came to sit beside the bed, putting the tray down on the bureau. It contained a bowl, a pitcher of gently-steaming liquid, and some cloths, Percy realised, glancing at it before turning his attention back to Lady Briarwood.

She didn't look like a vampire. But her husband hadn't either, and yet, those fangs, and the way his voice had inveigled itself into Percy's mind before he'd pushed it out - Percy couldn't think of how he could be anything but a vampire.

Lady Briarwood poured warm water from the pitcher into the bowl and set the bowl in her lap, dampening one of the cloths and reaching over to dab it against Percy's chest. He realised, then, that he'd been stripped down, and jerked away from her instinctively.

She watched him impassively, waiting until he had to resign himself to the alarming weakness keeping him trapped in the bed, and then moved to gently wash dried blood from his chest.

"Hello, my dear," she said. Her voice had been cool and elegant when he'd first met her; now, there was a thread of _interest_ to it that sent a shiver down his spine. It wasn't the sort of interest that Julius and Vesper had whispered about, that Percy had begun to notice himself, in recent years, but it was interest all the same and it wasn't something he wanted directed at him.

She could see his fear; he knew that the moment her smile deepened, a faint dimple appearing in one cheek. She kept rubbing the soft, damp cloth over his skin, cleaning sweat and dirt and blood from him as she spoke.

"I don't know if you recall from our introductions, but my name is Delilah," she said pleasantly. "I would like us to be civil, Percival. The last of a line is a precious thing, and believe me, you would much rather be valued by us than not."

"If you think I'll cooperate with the people who murdered by family," Percy began, trying to keep his voice firm despite his weakness. Before he could continue, Lady Briarwood laughed.

"Oh, my dear boy, I don't expect that," she said, her tone almost fond, like she was talking to a favoured pet. "Certainly not right away." She sighed, setting her soiled cloth aside and dampening a new one, starting to clean his face. "To be entirely honest with you, Percival, I would have preferred your sister Cassandra. She's old enough to be useful, whilst being young enough to be tractable; you're going to require much more work. But we have a great deal of time, so I can be patient. And Anna tells me you're intelligent, creative, curious - I could find many uses for that sort of mind."

"You're mad if you think I'll ever help you," Percy snarled, pulling away from her again.

Lady Briarwood patted his hair and got to her feet, putting the bowl of soiled water back onto the tray. "We'll chat again soon, Percival."

She left the room, the door locking with a heavy, ominous click behind her. She'd left the tray with the pitcher and bowls behind, and for a little while, Percy dismissed that as carelessness, the sort of negligence with _things_ that the bad sort of nobility so often displayed.

As time dragged on and nobody else came, he began to realise that it had been a carefully executed part of an intricate plan. The hunger that began gnawing at his stomach was uncomfortable, but not _entirely_ unfamiliar - Percy had got so caught up in his studies enough to forget about a meal or two before - but the burn of thirst in his throat was much, much harder to ignore.

The pitcher still held a few cups of water, and Percy stretched that out for as long as he could. Thirst returned, though, as hunger and deprivation weakened his already battered body, and he began to look at the water in the bowl, clouded with dirt and blood and sweat, as a possibility.

He'd tasted worse, he told himself after the first swallow. Even if that wasn't true, plenty of people who weren't him had tasted worse. Survival was paramount; he could tolerate any number of unpleasant tastes if it meant prolonging survival.

He made the dirty water last a while longer, but eventually, even that was gone. He'd been put in an interior guest room, so there was no chance of finding relief by collecting Whitestone's ever-present snow or rain. He was already in a weakened state, and the lack of food and water only made things worse.

He was starting to wonder if they'd just decided to leave him to die when the door opened again, letting Lady Briarwood back into the room. She carried a stoppered bottle and a covered bowl, and Percy had to fight to not run to her and wrench the bottle from her hands. He didn't have the strength to, for one thing, and he suspected that she was a lot more than the harmless noblewoman she'd seemed at first.

"Hello, my dear," she said, closing the door behind her. "Would you like some water?"

Percy watched her warily, trying to swallow. She watched him right back, the bottle held tantalisingly lax in one elegant hand. Silence stretched between them, until Lady Briarwood smiled and came over to the bed, holding the bottle out.

Percy swallowed again, his mouth feeling drier than a desert. She kept holding the bottle out, but when he reached for it, she lifted it a little, saying in a remonstrative tone, "What do we say?"

It was so like what his mother had said to them all as children, when she was teaching them proper manners, that Percy's eyes stung, too dry to produce proper tears. Lady Briarwood waited patiently, the bottle held just high enough that Percy, in his weakened state, couldn't reach up and grab it.

Eventually, he whispered hoarsely, "Please?"

Her smile was bright, and she unstoppered the bottle and set the covered bowl down next to Percy.

The water, and the simple, broth-softened bread that was in the bowl, tasted like the best thing he'd ever put in his mouth. Percy couldn't bring himself to feel ashamed of capitulating; his family would understand. Life was paramount. But when Lady Briarwood stopped him from gulping down the water, sitting next to him and cupping the back of his head with one hand as she supported the bottle with the other, _that_ sent a rush of shame through him.

"That wasn't so hard," she murmured, her fingers stroking gently through his hair. "Lesson one, Percival. It doesn't _have_ to be so unpleasant. It's all up to you."

It was a lesson that didn't stick, the first time. But as Lady Briarwood had said, they had plenty of time to reinforce their lessons, over and over, as lessons must be when they were to take properly.

It started simply at first. Percy was too weak to do much more than recover from the wounds that had nearly killed him, and it was an easy matter for Lady Briarwood to emphasise his dependence on her by denying food, or water, or, as the seasons turned and Whitestone's frigid winter came on, enough firewood to warm the interior room he was confined to. Even something so simple as access to adequate bathing supplies and properly-cleaned facilities - and, of course, being in an internal room, he couldn't even dispose of night soil by the time-honoured - and somewhat disgusting - method of hurling it from the window. It was a relatively small thing, compared to everything else, but being so reliant on Lady Briarwood's whims for the smallest things began to wear, as time ticked on.

The turning point, however, came almost accidentally. Percy, gathering up a flare of spite, snapped at her when she brought in an evening meal one night, and after looking at him for a long moment, she sighed.

"Really, Percival, I'm disappointed," she said, and her tone _sounded_ disappointed, like a mother whose clever child had done something out of character and foolish. "My husband and I have business in the south, and I was considering whether we might risk letting you out to come with us, but if you're not going to be able to be civil, you can just stay here."

That didn't particularly perturb Percy; he didn't want to be paraded about like some toy by whatever allies the Briarwoods were going to be talking to. But when Lady Briarwood got to her feet to leave for the night, she said over her shoulder, "Sylas and I are leaving in the morning, Percival. Anna will be looking after your education until we return."

His blood ran cold. The days he'd spent in Ripley's company had remained the subject of his bad dreams, even amongst the worst of Lady Briarwood's work on him, and if she didn't have them here to curb the worst of her impulses - he didn't relish the prospect.

They were gone for three weeks. Ripley left him alone to stew for what Percy judged to be something like two days, with food and water delivered during the night while he was asleep, and then on the morning of the third day, she was there when he woke up, giving him a bright smile and saying, "Good morning, Percival. We have so much work to do."

She wanted _something_ with his scientific studies, but seemed more interested in taking a full measure of his knowledge before getting down to specifics. She drilled him day after day, taking an obscene pleasure in meting out what she called _punishments_ when his answers came too slowly. She prodded into the clockwork trinkets he'd made, from the little timepieces he'd built for his family for Winter's Crest gifts in recent years to the tiny, scored-metal music box he'd been building for Vesper. She kept asking if he'd ever thought about _greater applications_ , and looking frustrated when he couldn't quite place what she meant - although in his defence, she'd had three of his fingers broken by that point, and the pain was more than a little distracting.

One afternoon, while she had him tied to a heavy chair in the guest quarters, she set a chunk of whitestone on the table and said, "You know what this is, yes?"

"Of course." The pain from the broken fingers had faded into a dull ache now, and she hadn't done anything _new_ in a little while. He felt tired and dull and as though he had a bad case of some winter illness, but whitestone was what _Whitestone_ was. He blinked at the chunk on the table and said, "It's Whitestone's chief export."

"Do you know its applications?" she pressed.

Percy struggled to marshal his thoughts, pulling together what he knew about whitestone. It could be refined, he knew that; it was more amenable than most substances to holding magical essences, which made it a better material for magical items than most, but the refinement process was a difficult one. He nodded, eventually, murmuring, "It's good for magic."

Ripley smiled a little, and that sent a shiver down his spine. He hadn't been able to work out whether she was more frightening when she was angry or when she was happy. She tapped her fingers on the chunk of ore and asked, "How would _you_ go about refining it?"

"The process-"

"Ignore the process," Ripley interrupted. "Pretend you don't know anything about the process. With what you know about science and what you know about the ore, if you needed to refine it _quickly_ and purely, how would you do it?"

Percy struggled with the question, forcing his brain to work through the fog of pain, fatigue, and deprivation. Eventually, he said slowly, "I'd begin with acids. The resulting material is almost a glass, so it would need to be a very specific, very strong blend of acids, but that's where I'd start."

That _was_ was the current refining process was, after all, but it only used one type of acid and it took time, for safety's sake. Doing it _quickly_ would mean finding something stronger, and would be more dangerous.

Ripley's smile brightened, and she impulsively leaned forward to press a delighted kiss to Percy's mouth, saying, "There's a clever boy. I told Delilah your brain was worth the effort."

He flinched, and she laughed. "Don't play coy, Percival. You're what, seventeen? You mean to tell me you've never tumbled some poor servant or blacksmith's lad?"

Percy could feel his cheeks burning, and Ripley laughed again, patting his cheek. "You're _not_. Well, I suppose those brains must distract you. You're missing out, you know. I'd show you what you're missing if it wouldn't get Delilah irritated with me."

He flinched again, and her fingers curled around his face, digging into his jaw. She kissed him once more, and then said, "Maybe I'll talk to her when she gets back. It's another tool, if it bothers you _this_ much. Or maybe if you behave, I'll forget about it."

She didn't let _him_ forget it. Her punishments moved from pain to discomfort, humiliation, skirting the edge of what she evidently felt she could get away with and not raise Lady Briarwood's ire. Nothing that Percy could rightly point to as _rape_ , not with what he understood that to be, but touches. Implications of what she _would_ do if given permission. More of those delighted little kisses when he said or did something that pleased her. When the second set of his clothing was taken for laundering and not returned, he began sleeping in his clothes, avoiding giving her the opportunity.

And it was enough. He hated himself for _letting_ it be enough, but it was. He let himself slip into quiet docility, behaving well enough to avoid giving her reasons to punish him.

When the Briarwoods returned, Lady Briarwood took charge of his _lessons_ again, and the first time Percy looked up to see her entering his room, he felt a surge of emotion that was painful in both its enormity and its very existence - _gratitude_. Gratitude that it was _her_.

"Anna tells me you've made progress," Lady Briarwood said, locking the door behind her and crossing the room to where Percy sat at the desk, looking down at him with a faint frown. She reached down to pick up his hands, her fingers running lightly over the abraded skin on his wrists where Ripley had had him tied to the chair, and the bruised, swollen fingers that had been broken, and sighed. "She's a blunt instrument, Anna, but she has her uses. I'd hoped to avoid this sort of unpleasantness."

He could feel himself shivering at the mention of Ripley, and Lady Briarwood's expression flickered almost imperceptibly. She made a quiet, sympathetic noise and asked, "Did you have a bad time with her, Percival? She seemed to think it went well enough. She had plenty of ideas to tell me when Sylas and I returned."

Percy couldn't help it; the shivers began to worsen, turning to shudders, and he couldn't bring himself to answer her. Lady Briarwood looked actually _concerned_ now, and she said, quietly but firmly, "Percival, open your mouth."

Her fingers were firm but gentle against his jaw, forcing his mouth open and slipping inside, and he felt an odd sort of relief go through her as they pressed carefully against his tongue. She removed them then and drew him to his feet with surprising strength, guiding him over to the bed. Percy tried to pull away as they got closer, but she murmured, "Hush, dear. You're safe."

Safe. What a ridiculous, ludicrous word. And yet, with _her_ here instead of Ripley, it was undeniable that he _did_ feel safer. He let out a choked laugh and let her draw him over to the bed, where she made him sit on the mattress and sat beside him, reaching up to gently stroke his hair, like his mother used to when he'd been young and had bad dreams.

"Would you like me to send her away, Percival?" she asked gently. "We have work that we need her to do, but it doesn't have to be _here_ , especially if you'll help us. You're more than intelligent enough to do what we need. What do you say?"

He swallowed, an icy lump in his throat, and whispered, "Yes, please."

"Done." She kissed his hair, and oddly, it didn't make him flinch the way Ripley's touches had. Maybe because Lady Briarwood touched him like she wanted him to think of her like someone maternal, not like someone sexual. From what he remembered of her and her husband at that ill-fated dinner, they'd both been too dedicated to each other to want that from anyone else. She resumed stroking his hair, lifting her sleeve to dab at the tears Percy hadn't even realised were trickling down his cheeks, and murmured, "We'll get those fingers seen to and get you some proper food, too. You've lost far too much weight."

Maybe a week later, Ripley left on some expedition, and Lady Briarwood brought Keeper Yennin to tend to Percy's hands and the other scrapes and bruises that Ripley had left in her wake. The Keeper's face was sad as he cast his healing spells, mending torn flesh but not able to touch the bone-deep ache or the odd, icy hollow that had settled in Percy's gut. As the magic lifted, Lady Briarwood said lightly, "Don't look so troubled, Keeper. We're going to make an effort to keep these visits to a minimum from now on."

Percy's perception of time died, locked in the internal room with no way to judge the passing of time, from as little as a day or as long as a season. The most he could tell was when the winter arrived and left, because the stones of the castle held the chill of the winter; even in the summer, the internal rooms remained cool enough that there was no indication of the heat outside. The meals that Lady Briarwood or the servants brought might have been used to mark the time, but Percy had the feeling they were being brought infrequently, to muddle his sense of how much time was passing. Lady Briarwood brought him the necessary things to keep him clean-shaven, so the growth of a beard was no indicator either, and every now and then she sat him down at the desk to trim his hair, in those odd moments where she seemed to want to be more of a mother than a captor.

The world shrank down. The few servants that he recognised moved about like ghosts, pale and drawn and often with bandages on their necks, and he was aware that if he tried to talk to them or get them to give him news from outside, they'd be punished for his infraction. He gave them as much kindness as he was able to, given the situation, by keeping out of their way when they brought him food and clean clothes and tended to the room. More often, though, the servants were unfamiliar, clearly brought by the Briarwoods, and never the same one twice in a row.

The only person he saw consistently was Lady Briarwood. The only person he spoke to at all was Lady Briarwood. She proved to be a surprisingly good conversationalist; on cold winter nights, she brought him books he recognised from his study and discussed natural philosophy and history with him. But she had other things to do, and the times that he was tended by servants, he found himself missing her.

It was normal, wasn't it?

One day, Lady Briarwood came in the early evening with a set of clothes folded over her arm and a gentle smile, saying, "We'd like you to join us for dinner tonight, Percival, and I thought you might like a proper bath."

He hesitated, torn between the relative safety of the room and the comfort of being _properly_ clean, and eventually nodded, following her to the set of bathing rooms that had been built into the guest wing of the castle. Lightly-scented steam billowed from one open door, and Lady Briarwood led him inside, where the huge stone bath waited, full of hot water.

Difficult choices, between dignity and necessity, had become the norm weeks ago. He stripped down, when it became clear that Lady Briarwood wasn't going to leave him unattended, and lowered himself into the hot water, letting out a tiny sound of relief as the heat sank into his muscles. Lady Briarwood had discreetly averted her eyes as she sat down on a bench by the wall, settling her skirts demurely, and by the time she turned back, the bubbles and the water itself were sufficient to maintain the illusion of dignity.

She let him tend to himself, although she moved to sit behind the stone tub and wash his hair for him. Her fingers were gentle in his hair, massaging the shampoo into his scalp, and she murmured, "Doesn't this feel better, dear?"

She left him alone to get dressed, saying something about waiting for him outside, and Percy took advantage of the solitude to dry off properly and gaze at himself in the mirror that decorated one wall of the bathing chamber. He'd lost weight, in however long it had been; without clothes to hide it, the starkness of bones, too-visible beneath fragile skin, was more evident. Not enough to be considered _skeletal_ , but certainly more than was healthy. Dark smudges under his eyes made him look as though he hadn't been sleeping.

The biggest change, though, and the biggest shock - there were no mirrors in his room, and Lady Briarwood always carefully swept up the trimmings when she cut his hair - was that his once-brown hair had turned stark white, somewhere between the dungeon and now. It made him look older. He wasn't entirely sure exactly how old he _was_ anymore, given his damaged sense of time, but it couldn't be more than eighteen or nineteen, and the white hair and stress on his face added at least a few years.

It wasn't something he had the luxury of minding. He put on the clothes that Lady Briarwood had supplied for him, rich things that were suited to the sort of life Percy had lived before the Briarwoods had come, and went out to join Lady Briarwood in the corridor. She gave him a warm smile and took his hand, saying, "You look lovely, dear," and led him through the halls to one of the private dining rooms.

It was just the three of them at the meal, set in one of the intimate dining rooms rather than the great hall, and it was set family-style, the dishes already on the table, with a few on the sideboard, to avoid the need for servants in the room while they ate and talked. Lady Briarwood sat Percy down in the chair set between the two at either end of the small table, and then moved to where Lord Briarwood waited at one end, leaning up to kiss him.

Lord Briarwood smiled at Percy as they both sat down, those fangs flashing again, and said, "It's good to see you again, Percival. We felt it was time, though, given the date."

Percy blinked at him. "The date?"

Lady Briarwood lifted her glass of wine in a delicate toast. "Your nineteenth birthday, dear."

Nineteen. Percy was quiet for a few minutes, after that. Nineteen meant that for the better part of twenty months, he'd been held captive in his family's own castle. He'd known that he'd lost track of time, but he hadn't realised it had been _that_ long.

"I'm afraid we've had some bad news, Percival," Lord Briarwood said. "Delilah and I have business interests in the wider Tal'Dorei community, and we've heard news of your sister."

Percy couldn't breathe.

"It seems Cassandra has given up on Whitestone," Lady Briarwood said, her voice soft and sad. "Our agents have spotted her gallivanting about with some rag-tag group of mercenaries, without a care in the world."

The world shrank down to the Briarwoods' voices and Percy's hands in his tunnelling vision, shaking on the tablecloth.

He'd thought Cassandra must have been dead. Nothing else made sense. But if she was still alive, if she was out there and just - what? Making friends? _Living_?

Maybe it was unfair to blame her for that. She was younger than he was, and he liked to think he wouldn't even have blamed Julius or Vesper for escaping and making the most of what life was left. In a way, he was _glad_ she was living her own life now. But still...

He couldn't look up from his hands, still shaking on the tablecloth, droplets falling onto them. Then there was a rustling sound, and then Lady Briarwood dragged her chair over to sit beside him, covering his hands with hers, and Lord Briarwood's hands rested on his shoulders, squeezing gently.

"It's hard to be disappointed by family," Lord Briarwood said, his deep, resonant voice sympathetic. "But we didn't feel we had the right to keep it from you."

"No," Percy managed to say. "No, I'm glad... I'm glad to know. Thank you."

"I suppose it's fitting enough that it's your birthday," Delilah murmured, stroking Percy's hair gently. "Your family might be disappointing you, but you know, you've become a part of ours, dear. I hope you feel the same way."

He gazed at her hands on his, and nodded, whispering, "Yes. Yes, Delilah. I think I do."


	2. When you're feeling empty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cassandra escapes and takes the first steps on the path towards vengeance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content notes for this chapter: more violence and torture, because Ripley and Professor Anders are the worst.

Cassandra was fourteen when she learned about evil.

She hadn't been interested in the visiting nobles; that was Julius and Vesper's job, and she'd been busy with some swordplay in the training room. She was young for it, but the arms master had said she'd showed promise, and so their parents had let her put more time in, indulging their youngest in a way that smaller noble families couldn't afford to. With Julius and Vesper interested in the ins and outs of rule, and Whitney and Ludwig happy to study the same things just in case or to make good marriages, Percival, Oliver, and Cassandra could indulge in less traditional studies, from Percival's tinkering and science to Oliver's frequent excursions with the Keeper to Cassandra's interest in swords and the less _overt_ forms of politics. Not every noble got their way through leadership, after all. The de Rolos might have been good people who had little use for spies and intrigue, but they still knew the value of a good ambassador and a talented diplomat.

But the Briarwoods came, and the family fell.

Cassandra was kept in almost luxury, for a few days, and she was unaccountably angry about that. She was fourteen and full of her own self-importance, and the notion of being considered harmless enough to keep imprisoned in one of the guest quarters, rather than the cells, was infuriating.

And then Dr Ripley came to ask her questions about the castle and the family, and Cassandra realised that it hadn't been harmlessness that had kept her from trouble before now; it had been Ripley's preoccupation with one of her siblings.

Ripley and Professor Anders shared interrogation duty, and that told her that the sibling who remained wasn't one of the other girls. None of them had had Anders as a tutor, and from the guilty looks he threw her occasionally, he was starting to feel the pinch of betrayal in his conscience. Not enough to not profit from it, and not enough to not wield the tools of torture when the Briarwoods needed information from her, but enough that if it had been up to _her_ , Cassandra wouldn't have set him to torture Julius, Percival, Oliver, or Ludwig, the boys he'd taught. That might just have been the root to widen the crack and break open the whole operation, and the Briarwoods were clearly too clever to risk it.

She could work with his guilt, however much it disgusted her that he grew a conscience after the fact. Ripley gave her nothing to pry at in order to find out who else was being tormented by their captors, but Anders, while he wasn't as close to Cassandra as he was to the boys, knew her well enough that she could sway him with her youth and some judiciously deployed weakness. And it wasn't hard; she wasn't so strong or so jaded that she could stand up to torture for long. Telling herself that her parents would forgive her, she told them about the secret passages that they seemed to want to know about, the family crypt beneath the castle that Cassandra had explored with her childhood friends and scared each other with ghost stories in, and when Ripley left her in Anders's care, she lay gasping and weeping on the torture table for several long minutes, letting him fidget uncomfortably, before whispering, "Professor? Who - who else is there?"

He started, like he was surprised that she'd worked out that there was someone else left alive, and she let out a broken little laugh that was only partly feigned and said, "That's where she goes, isn't it? Who else is left?"

He looked torn, but eventually said gruffly, "Percival's hanging on."

Percival. She couldn't say it made sense, but it didn't _not_ make sense either. There was nothing of sense in any of this; there was no logic or lack thereof to why she and Percival were the ones to survive. It was dumb luck, and ascribing it to anything more was asking for more heartache than she could afford to take on right now. But it did make sense of why Anders was the one left with her more often, while Ripley went and attended to Percival's torture; he'd spent the most time with Percival out of all the boys, given Percival's studious, enquiring bent. This early in the Briarwoods' occupation, he would find it hard to participate in the torture of his prize pupil. Ripley would have no such compunctions.

Her heart ached for Percival, but there was no time to dwell on his fate; getting loose and getting them out had to take precedence, and she had the best chance to do that. Ripley and Anders both seemed to consider her little more than a child, a perception helped by her late blooming, something that Vesper had teased her mercilessly about and that Cassandra was fiercely grateful for right now. If being thought a child meant they underestimated her, then she would be as childlike as she could, and wait for them to slip up.

It helped that Anders seemed so viscerally uncomfortable with matters of the body. Ripley was happy to let her captive lie in her own filth, but Anders always looked faintly scandalised when he came into the room after one of Ripley's sessions to find Cassandra urine-soaked after her body giving out from pain. She stored that little bit of information, and late one night, after a particularly vicious session that had Ripley triumphantly stalking off to inform the Briarwoods that yes, there _was_ a tunnel leading further from the family crypt, though Cassandra had never dared to explore it, when Anders started to leave the room, she sniffled and whispered, "Professor?"

He turned, looking uncomfortable, and she asked, the weakness in her voice only partly feigned, "Please, Professor, I need-"

She hadn't learned the art of blushing on cue the way girls in romance novels apparently could, but she didn't need to be able to act for tears to stand in her eyes; her entire body ached, and it was getting harder to remember her plans. She had to strike now, before she broke any further.

She bit her lip, letting out a trembling, gasping breath, and tried again. "I need the privy, Professor, please. She won't let me in the morning. _Please_."

He looked, if anything, more uncomfortable, and hesitated at the door. Afraid that he was about to overcome his discomfort and leave, Cassandra pulled out the last card she had; she started crying in earnest. She'd never been a pretty crier, but that worked to her favour; she wanted him to pity her, not think she was _pretty_.

The tears seemed to do it. He let out a hefty breath and hurried over, untying the ropes binding her to the table and saying gruffly, "No trouble, missy."

She leaned on him more than she needed to as he helped her over to the guest room's privy, calculating that it would make him more uncomfortable, and less likely to be thorough afterward, if he had to _listen_ to her. Sure enough, when he helped her back up onto the table, he wasn't quite able to look her in the eye, and he missed her pulling a loop of the rope into her palm as he tied her wrists again.

They always left her in the dark at night, which made things a little more difficult, but she would manage. There was no other choice. Once the door was closed and she'd counted two hundred breaths to make sure he wasn't coming back, she let go of the loop of rope she'd kept hold of, and the slack was enough to slip one hand free.

Getting the other hand free, in the dark, was difficult, and her wrist was scraped up from the rough ropes by the time she was done, but it was _worth it_. She made short work of the ropes around her ankles and then, risking lighting a single candle, she hurried into the guest room's dressing room, hoping that they'd thought to stash her in a room set aside for female guests.

Luck, for once, was with her; they had. The de Rolos were considered gracious hosts, and that included making sure their guests had all the little sundries they might want. Cassandra rummaged through the vanity and found a little box containing a dozen hairpins, in case some visiting noblewoman had forgotten or misplaced hers. They weren't fancy, and they weren't the actual lockpicks that Mother had confiscated from a travelling merchant a few years back and that Cassandra had subsequently absconded with, but they would do. And if it came to it, Cassandra was pretty sure that being poked with one would hurt enough to give her some time to escape.

Searching for Percival took longer than she liked, especially since she had to keep to the shadows and move slowly to avoid running into the Briarwoods' servants. She searched all the likely places in the castle proper - his quarters, the other guest quarters - and looked for her parents and other siblings as well, although she held out little hope for their survival. She would consider herself lucky if she found Percival in any state to escape.

The hours had ticked on to near dawn by the time she made her way down to the cells, having lost three hairpins to recalcitrant locks. There had been no sign of Percival anywhere else, and his workshop had shown significant signs of someone rummaging around in it, which worried her. Percival was clever, and came up with all sorts of interesting trinkets; who knew what value that would have to people like Ripley and the Briarwoods? Spurred on by worry, she mangled another hairpin in the lock to the cells before managing to get it open, and made her way into the prison proper.

The sight of her brother made her draw in a sharp breath and vow to mete out every scrap of suffering that Ripley had inflicted on him. Percival was older than her, certainly, but he was an intellectual, practically a dreamer sometimes, and being the youngest didn't mean Cassandra didn't have the protective streak that all the de Rolos seemed to have inherited. The sight of the flayed hand and arm, scabbed-over and stiff-looking in the dim light of the prison's lantern, made her see red, and she was painfully aware that that was probably the least of it.

He was asleep, or unconscious, as she knelt to work at the lock to his cell with her purloined hairpins. The scrape of metal on metal sounded loud enough to raise the alarm in the quiet prison, and the rustle of him moving, equally loud, caught her attention. She looked up to see him looking at her as though he wasn't quite sure she was really there.

"Shush," she whispered, turning a hairpin ever so slightly and listening to a tumbler click. "I've almost got it, but we have to be quiet."

Her fingers shook as she manipulated the hairpins, but she shook her head and focused. Percival couldn't do anything from within the cell, and he looked worse than she felt; this was up to her. She worked at the lock for another moment, and eventually, it clicked open.

"Come on," she said, still as quietly as she could, aware of the hissing of the sibilants. "Ripley and Anders are going to be up soon, but daybreak's safer than night. We have to go now."

People looked for escapes at night. They startled at unexpected noises breaking the silence of night. But people out and about at daybreak was normal for a city the size of Whitestone. She and Percival could, she hoped, blend into the sounds of everyone else going about their morning.

It took Percival longer than she liked to nod and scramble to his feet, but she was heartened by the fact that he _could_. As he joined her on her side of the bars, he reached out with his good hand and gave her shoulder a quick, firm squeeze; she rewarded the effort with a shaky smile.

"The escape tunnel. It's not far from here," he said, glancing around them. And then he asked the question she'd been dreading. "Who else did you find?"

She fought tears for a moment, and then said, "There's nobody else, Percival. Just us, now."

He'd been told as much, she could tell from his expression, but clearly hadn't wanted to believe it. She could see realisation sinking in, and acceptance, and finally he steeled himself and they both crept from the prison to the secret passage that had been constructed as an escape route for just this sort of situation. It hadn't been needed before, and it felt shockingly inadequate now, with only two of the nine de Rolos running through it, but it would have to be enough.

The sound of hounds baying didn't surprise Cassandra, as she and Percival reached the outskirts of the castle's grounds. They were valuable prisoners, whatever the Briarwoods wanted with them; their absence would have been noted. She'd hoped for more time, but she hadn't _expected_ it. She glanced at Percival, seeing the same exhausted determination in his eyes, and they began to run.

It was difficult. She hadn't been able to move around much in days, and her muscles protested the sudden exertion. She could feel her breath coming harsh and painful in her lungs as they were forced to work harder than she was used to, and she could hear Percival letting out gasps of pain beside her.

And then there was a shout from behind them, and Percival made a sound that cut Cassandra to the core. She turned in time to see the third arrow hit him, joining two already sticking out of his chest, and she screamed his name as he fell to the dew-wet ground, blood already leaking from the wounds.

The men were coming. Percival's eyes were closed, and Cassandra couldn't tell if he was breathing. She had no choice.

She had no choice.

She turned, the chill wind seeming to freeze the tears on her cheeks, and kept running, leaving her brother behind her and praying that he was dead.

Three of the men chasing them kept following her, and she kept running. She hadn't left Percival bleeding out just to get caught. She pushed pain to the back of her mind and focused on the simple fact of putting one foot in front of the other, until suddenly there was no ground in front of her, and before she could backpedal, she fell.

Whitestone Falls, she thought vaguely as the wind rippled around her. Of course.

The water was a better death than the Briarwoods, she decided in those last moments. The river could have her. The icy water dulled the pain of her wounds, and she slipped away.

The world wasn't done with her. She woke in a tiny fishing village, tucked into the bed of the headman's oldest daughter with the healer fussing over her, all the villagers looking at her with so much concern that it almost made her want to cry. The last people that had looked at her like that had died, and she wasn't prepared to let anyone else into her heart any time soon. It was still too bruised.

They tried to get her to tell them who had hurt her, but she told them she didn't remember. She told them the only thing she remembered was that her name was Cassie.

Maybe it was wishful thinking, that if she said it often enough, it would come true. They let her stay with them over the winter, while snow and sleet and her own injuries and weakness made it too dangerous to travel, and she spent most of those long months sleeping and healing. The headman's daughter was kind, bringing her this and that, little things that other girls might have found amusing, but Cassandra could find little joy in anything during those cold, grey months. The flip side to that was that she found little sorrow either; when the healer sighed and told her that the streak in her hair was likely permanent, she looked at the white streak marring her brown hair in the mirror and felt nothing about it, except perhaps an acknowledgement that it made her look a little older.

Spring came late that year, and Cassandra bade the little fishing village farewell. They were good people; they deserved better than the de Rolo's curse brought down on their heads.

For a while, she roamed aimlessly, her only goal to move further south, away from the Briarwoods. The scars on her face and the white streak in her hair made her look older than her fifteen years, and something about her bearing made people leave her alone on the road, more or less. She sold labour on farms to earn enough to eat, relishing the work; it got her exhausted enough to sleep without dreaming.

And then one day, seven months after the Briarwoods, she met Joriel.

It wasn't an auspicious meeting. There was a regularly-used campsite near the road she'd been travelling on, and she shared it with a small merchant caravan and a woman in battered chain mail. Cassandra kept to herself, until the bandits attacked.

She'd learned to defend herself, the last several months, and she'd picked up a set of leather armour and an old sword. The merchants were useless, so Cassandra leapt into the fray, noting as she did that the woman in chain mail was fighting fiercely beside her. Between the two of them, they made short work of the attacking bandits, and Cassandra watched as the woman knelt by one of the bodies, searching until she found a tag around the bandit's neck that she snapped off, looking satisfied.

"Old enemy?" Cassandra couldn't help asking.

The woman nodded, tucking the tag away and getting to her feet. "You sound like you know how that feels."

Cassandra shrugged, cleaning off her sword, and remained quiet. The woman watched her for a long moment, and then said quietly, "You've got the fire. Who did they kill?"

The sword made a satisfying sound as she slid it back into her sheath. "My family."

The woman nodded. "Thought so. You know who it was?"

Cassandra looked up and glared at her. "You have a lot of questions."

"I'm supposed to be looking for likely recruits." The woman laughed drily. "You've got to have a certain frame of mind for my line of work."

Despite herself, Cassandra was intrigued. "I'm not looking to join the army."

"Not the army, girl." She laughed again. "I'm a paladin."

Cassandra had met paladins before. She hadn't disliked them, but she had never considered it a possibility for herself. She said dismissively, "I'm not much of a one for the gods."

"You don't need to be." The woman fished the tag out again and showed it to Cassandra. It looked almost like a family crest. "Orders of paladins, sure, like the paladins of Bahamut over in Vassalheim, but some of us follow ideals or missions rather than gods. People who've been wronged, who have vengeance to wreak - sometimes they make the best paladins. Not all darkness can be beaten back by virtue and light."

Cassandra let out a bitter snort. _That_ was certainly true. "So your power comes from what? Conviction?"

"Something like that. Your motives mean enough, maybe the universe acknowledges it."

It stuck in Cassandra's mind for the rest of the night, and in the morning, when they all broke camp, she sought out the woman in chain mail again.

"What we talked about last night," she said. "How do I start?"

The woman smiled. "How about with a name? I'm Joriel."

For the first time in a long time, Cassandra's smile didn't feel so forced. "Cassandra."

"Nice to meet you, Cassandra," Joriel said. "Who are you fighting for?"

Cassandra reached into her pocket and pulled out the signet ring she'd been wearing when she escaped, that she'd been unable to bring herself to sell, even when she'd needed the money, and said quietly, "The de Rolos."

Joriel spent a year teaching her swordcraft and bought her a set of chain mail, and then told her that she would know where her mission would take her. Cassandra was surprised to find that she _did_. She was in the world to take people like the Briarwoods _out_ of it; that meant people who enabled them, too, and that meant people like Professor Anders and Dr Ripley. Professor Anders was out of her reach right now, but Cassandra had heard talk of Dr Ripley in recent months, doing some sort of work in a ruin near Stilben.

She didn't even get close. Ripley had guards, and Cassandra, while she'd improved her skills in the year she'd spent with Joriel, wasn't a match for several opponents. They stripped her of her armour and weapon and tossed her into a cell, and Cassandra had several long hours to wonder whether this was how Percival had felt when he'd woken in the prison beneath Whitestone.

"Look who came back from the dead," Ripley said, late in the evening. She stood in the doorway, dusting off her hands. "We all thought you'd gone and died in the water. Delilah and Sylas are going to be so surprised to hear you survived after all."

Cassandra bared her teeth in a feral smile, getting to her feet and crossing over to the bars. " _Delilah and Sylas_ are the next on my list," she spat.

Ripley laughed. "Little girl, you're going to die in here," she said, her tone oddly fond. "You de Rolos, you've got no sense of your own fragility, do you? Percival was exactly the same."

A chill went through Cassandra. "Keep his name out of your mouth."

"Oh, sweetheart." Ripley's tone turned condescending. "I did a lot worse to your precious brother than say his name. He wasn't nearly such an innocent by the time I was done with him."

Cassandra reacted instinctively. She made a fist with the hand bearing the de Rolo signet ring and thrust it through the bars, drawing on whatever power it was that granted her her paladin gifts, snapping out a prayer of denunciation. Ripley needed to be _burned from the world_.

Ripley let out a gasped curse and took a quick step back into the doorway of the prison, muttering, "You little _bitch_. You went and got magical. Die with your god, then."

Cassandra started laughing as Ripley fled, and kept laughing as she sank down to the floor of the cell, shaking a little. She had no god. Gods had no time for people like her. She'd learned, that night the Briarwoods came, that the gods could only work through their faithful, and there just weren't enough of those in the world to make a difference. People had to help themselves.

Ripley had apparently been shaken by her brush with Cassandra's magic; she didn't return. Neither did the guards who had bested Cassandra in the first place. After the first few days, Cassandra accepted the fact that they'd left her here to die.

She was stronger than she'd been before, but the cell was well-made, and even her strength wasn't enough to break her out. As the days ticked by and her strength waned from lack of food and water, she began to think that perhaps that wasn't such a bad thing. At least she'd see her family again.

The fifth day, as dehydration started to really wear on her, she rallied. The notion of seeing her family again was an appealing one, but not if it meant leaving the Briarwoods, Anders, and Ripley in the world to hurt other people. She didn't know whether their plans had ended at Whitestone or if there was something more involved behind their destruction of her family, but either way, they needed to be destroyed.

"Come on," she whispered, her dry lips cracking and bleeding. "Wherever this power comes from, if it comes from _anyone_ , I'm not done yet. Send me _something_. I'll find other darkness in the world and destroy it while I work towards mine, just send me something to help."

A few hours later, she was halfway between dozing and unconsciousness when the sound of the prison door opening startled her out of semi-consciousness, and the sound of a sharp intake of breath. A low voice called out, "Vax! I need your tricky fingers in here!"

She stirred, dragging herself upright, and blinked wearily at the woman standing in the doorway. Half-elven. Dark hair in a braid, a bow held low, the flash of blue feathers in her hair. Cassandra was too exhausted, too thirsty and hungry to pick out any other salient features.

The woman came over to the bars, crouching down and saying quietly, "Hold on, darling. We'll get you out of there."

Cassandra let out a dry, raspy laugh. They were taking an awful lot on faith, that she didn't deserve to be in here.

There was a snorting noise in the doorway, and Cassandra blinked at the great, furry bulk inserting itself into the room, Behind it was another half-elven figure, dark-haired like the woman, but with daggers sheathed on a belt, not a bow.

"Trinket, darling, move out of Vax's way," the woman urged, and the furry thing shuffled to one side to let the new elf up to the cell door. He pulled out a set of lockpicks and began to work at the lock, while the woman rummaged in her pack, saying over her shoulder, "I don't know that I've got many healing potions, but I should have _something_."

"I don't need potions," Cassandra muttered, her voice coming out cracked and almost inaudible.

The woman turned back to look at her, frowning, and said, her voice gentle, "You look _awful_. We'll help."

The lock clicked open, and the man came into the cell, leaning down to examine Cassandra. His eyes widened, and he said, "Vex, she's not _hurt_. She's been _left_ here."

There was a moment of silence, and then the woman swore and said, "Right. Let's get you up on Trinket."

Trinket was, apparently, the furry thing, who turned out to be a young bear who was quite happy to carry Cassandra out of the prison. The elves let Cassandra doze until they reached the inn that they were evidently staying at, where they alternately bullied and cajoled her into managing her way upstairs to the room Vex was in.

They didn't ask her any questions; they just sat with her and fed her tiny bites of food that stung her cracked and dry lips, little sips of water, getting a full meal into her over the course of about six hours before she fell into a fitful sleep again.

She woke briefly to hear the elves - twins, she'd worked out, given how similar they looked - quietly discussing. Discussing her, she realised.

"-left there to _starve_?"

That was the woman. Vex, Cassandra vaguely recalled. Vex'ahlia. It was a pretty name. She was the one who belonged to the bear.

"She's a fighter." That was the man, Vax'ildan. The one with the clever fingers and the knives. "I found armour and a sword tossed into a side room; the armour looks like it'd fit her. She's got sword-callouses. New, but there."

"What do we do?"

Cassandra could hear the shrug in Vax'ildan's voice. "We can't just leave her."

She drifted off again, struggling with the idea of having someone to _care_ again. She'd spent so long trying not to build connections. But would it be so bad to have comrades? Maybe she could help them destroy the darkness in the world.

Maybe they would help her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this version of Cassandra is essentially a paladin who's taken the Oath of Vengeance. The thing she did to Ripley was her Channel Divinity power of Abjure Enemy, which requires the target to make a Wisdom saving throw or be Frightened. Ripley does not appreciate being scared of a 16-year-old.
> 
> Next chapter: back to Percy!


	3. I've taken my beating

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Delilah and Sylas continue to make Percy part of the family. It's not the most fun thing ever. And then Percy starts to dream about a being made of smoke.
> 
> Content notes for this chapter: biting! (Who is surprised? Sylas is here) and whipping. More headfuckery, now coming from two sides!
> 
> Back to Cassandra for the next chapter, as I get into stream content! That'll be fun.

Life with Sylas and Delilah shrank down into the confines of the castle walls and became a matter of survival, both physical and something more intangible. With what Percy was starting to consider his capitulation, the night he'd turned nineteen, things changed; a few days later, Delilah took him from the interior room that had been his cell for almost two years and led him to a wing of the castle that had luxurious rooms, vaulted ceilings and few windows. It wasn't the part of the castle that had been the family wing -- they'd all enjoyed wide windows and balconies to take in the air, even during Whitestone's bitter winters -- but there were few parts of Whitestone Castle that lacked sufficient luxury.

"Sylas and I have decided this should be the family wing," Delilah told Percy, one hand resting high on his back, right at the back of his neck. "And it's time you're out of that _guest_ room. We want you close."

Her fingers pressed lightly on those last words, a delicate flexing that Percy thought was almost unconscious, and he nodded. There was no point in arguing, even if he'd wanted to; given a choice between rooms near the Briarwoods that he could come and go from freely and rooms further from them that he was confined to, he'd take what freedom of movement he could get.

Delilah showed him around the suite like a new homeowner, pointing out this amenity or that luxury -- and the suite _was_ luxurious, fitted out with every comfort he could have wanted. Every superficial, physical comfort, anyway, with the possible exception of access to natural light, but Percy had been the exception in his family in that he'd been quite happy to hole up in his workshop for days on end without seeing sunlight. He supposed if anyone was going to be held captive by people who seemed to be nocturnal, he wasn't a bad choice.

The closet was full of clothing, and none of it was familiar. It all looked like it would _fit_ , but the style was subtly off from what Percy had worn before, and a part of him was quietly impressed at the depths of Delilah and Sylas's ingenuity; self-identity was an important part of being able to stand up to one's enemies, and stripping him of something as simple as being able to dress in the way he preferred was a powerful move. The clothing was perfectly decent, well-made and tasteful and of the same _quality_ that he'd always worn, but the colours and cuts were different, clearly Delilah and Sylas's tastes.

What he could _genuinely_ appreciate, though, was the set of workrooms attached to his suite. Delilah stood at the doorway of the first as he investigated it, saying lightly, "I'll admit, I don't quite know what all this is for, but we took cues from your workshop downstairs and we had some advice from Anna. I hope it's to your liking."

He couldn't quite help the flinch at Ripley's name, but he nodded, saying, "It's all very good quality. Thank you, Delilah."

She smiled. "Of course, we have ulterior motives. If Anna's to be doing her work elsewhere, we need someone _here_ working on melting down the whitestone more efficiently."

The unspoken was clear; if Percy didn't perform, Ripley would be brought back. He nodded again and said, "There's a chemistry room as well, you said?"

"Mm. Next to this one."

"I might need different chemicals," Percy warned. "I'll do my best, of course, but I can't predict where the work will go."

"That's fine, Percival," Delilah said, her voice soothing. "Just let us know what you need and we'll see to it."

For a little while, Percy kept to himself, working on chemical compounds that would melt down the whitestone faster, taking most meals in the workrooms, except for supper, which Delilah and Sylas insisted on eating together. They inquired about his work, but didn't push for faster results, and when he requested new chemicals, the chemicals were provided with no questions asked. It was an oddly soothing routine, one that let him almost sleepwalk through life.

A few months before his twentieth birthday, though, he lay awake early one morning, long after Sylas and Delilah had bade him good night. He'd worked out, by now, what they were. Sylas never hinted at wanting to feed on him, and Delilah rarely used magic around him, but he wasn't _stupid_ , and they weren't trying to hide it, either, between their preference for windowless rooms and Delilah's study of the sort of magic that most people considered unsavoury at best. Sylas's reluctance to bite Percy seemed more to do with how much weight he'd lost during his confinement, and Delilah didn't use magic in everyday matters, that was all. They might not tell him everything, but these days, they didn't keep much from him either. They expected the same openness from him, and occasionally had to chastise him for being too closed-off, but Percy learned quickly how to please them and avoid their ire.

Tonight, though, he felt unsettled in a way he hadn't since the Briarwoods had first arrived. He threw off the heavy blankets and left his rooms, ignoring the prickle of fear along the back of his neck as he walked past the door to the Briarwoods' suite. He was just walking around the castle. That was nothing for them to get upset about.

He kept telling himself that as he followed his sense of unease to the outer walls of the castle. The guards, used to his presence by now, didn't give him a second glance as they went on their rounds. It was unusual for him to be seen _outside_ , even if he was technically still within the confines of the castle, but the servants and staff didn't tend to interfere with him, leaving him to the Briarwoods. He didn't blame them.

The sky was turning grey with pre-dawn light as he mounted the castle wall, still unsettled with some strange unease. He frowned, gazing out over the sleeping Whitestone, trying to work out what was making him feel this way.

And then the sun rose above the horizon, sickly and blurred behind a thick grey blanket of cloud cover, the Sun Tree became visible in the weak dawn light, and Percy abruptly threw up.

"Percival."

Delilah stood behind him. He didn't know how long he'd been standing there, shaking with sickness, staring at the withered, dying wreck that had once been the vibrant green Sun Tree, the symbol of Pelor's gift to Whitestone. The loss of such a strong symbol of life would have been bad enough, but the twisted, bloated fruit that it bore, that his mind refused to acknowledge had once been living men and women, made that loss into perversion.

"Percival." Delilah came up beside him and sighed. "This isn't how I wanted you to see that."

He wanted to ask what Whitestone had done to deserve such a desecration, but he didn't. Asking questions that Sylas and Delilah didn't want to answer was dangerous, even for someone as favoured as Percy, and now he'd seen what happened to people who _weren't_ favoured.

"Come on, Percival," Delilah said gently. "Come inside."

He let her lead him inside and back to his rooms. It was still early enough in the morning that most of the castle was still in bed, and it didn't feel strange, in that respect at least, to have Delilah help him back into bed. A part of his mind helpfully pointed out that he was in shock, but most of him felt too cold and tired to pay any attention to anything but doing what she was gently urging him to do.

Had his family swung from those branches while he'd bled under Ripley's hands?

Delilah sat on the edge of the bed and brushed her fingers lightly over his hair, murmuring, "I'm sorry to have given you such a shock, my dear. I'd wanted to wait until you were stronger before you saw how we've had to solidify our hold."

He didn't answer, and she sighed again, resting her fingertips lightly on his forehead, and said softly, "Get some sleep, dear. Things will be better soon."

He could feel the magic pressing at him, willing him into sleep, and this time, he didn't resist it.

That night was the first time he felt a _presence_ in his dreams. it was a quiet presence, one that didn't make itself known by anything more than the light smell of smoke and the sense that something was watching him, and he forgot about it after he woke.

In an effort to drive the image of the devastated Sun Tree from his mind, Percy threw himself into his work. Sylas and Delilah didn't work him overly hard, and he had time to pursue projects of his own, if he wanted to. For a little while, he didn't, doing nothing but what was requested of him but eventually, the urge to create returned, and he began to put the clockwork workshop to use. At first, it was just little trinkets, bits of amusement to reassure himself that he hadn't lost his capabilities during his time under Ripley's hands, in the long isolation, or in the shock of seeing the Sun Tree brought so low. Then more complex plans began working their way into his mind, and he accepted that he'd kept the intellect and vision that had made Ripley and the Briarwoods so interested in him in the first place.

And the presence kept watch, never saying a thing, as his dreams remained vivid and tormented.

Winter's Crest that year marked a change in Sylas and Delilah's demeanour, if a temporary one. They seemed frustrated, as though some opportunity had passed that they hadn't been able to take advantage of. Percy was aware of it, but he didn't really take heed of it -- not until he made a mistake that raised Sylas's ire.

It was a simple thing. He was unable to sleep, as so often happened these days; his dreams had been full of that presence, and he'd woken early and wandered without aim, more to try to tire himself out than because he was _looking_ for anything or actively doing anything. The servants were used to that and kept out of his way, and after an hour or so of drifting, he found himself in the front hall.

He wasn't supposed to be in this part of the castle. Sylas and Delilah hadn't said it outright, but there were parts of the castle that he had free rein to wander in and parts -- like the crypts, where the work was going on -- that he was supposed to stay away from. The front hall was one of the no-go zones, or was supposed to be.

There were no guards. He didn't know where Delilah and Sylas were, or even what time it was. Like a player given a script, he didn't even think about it as he drifted towards the door like a moth to a flame, reaching out to touch the handle. The door cracked open an inch, and bright sunlight spilled into the front hall, a line of golden light so bright that it hurt Percy's eyes.

"Percival."

He whipped around, looking wide-eyed at Sylas, who stood on the stairs, his expression disappointed rather than angry. The spear of sunlight didn't reach the stairs, and for a moment, a part of Percy wondered what would happen if he threw the doors open.

He didn't. He pushed the door closed with his foot while keeping his eyes on Sylas.

"You're not supposed to be down here."

He couldn't think of anything to say. How was he supposed to explain what had happened? "I got lost in my own home" would sound so hollow.

Sylas sighed and approached, wrapping his hand around Percy's upper arm. With a grip that was at once gentle and inexorable, he towed Percy back upstairs, and to one of the rooms in the family wing that Percy hadn't been into yet.

Setting foot in it now, he wished he hadn't. It had been stripped of carpet and wallpaper, returned to bare stone floor and walls, and a thick wood post had been erected in the middle of the floor. Sylas dragged Percy over to the post, not ungently, and stripped off Percy's shirt, tossing it aside. He lashed Percy's wrists to the post, stepping back and saying, "You need to learn, Percival. This is for your own good."

Tied as tightly as he was, it was difficult to see the rest of the room, but the wall directly ahead of him was plenty of fuel for his imagination. It was hung with several implements of torture -- and since his days with Ripley, Percy was intimately familiar with _those_ \-- and Sylas went over to it, selecting three. He brought them over and asked gently, "Which one, Percival?"

It was an impossible decision. If he decided on one that was too gentle, he risked Sylas thinking he didn't take the infraction and resultant punishment seriously. Too harsh, and he risked setting too high a pain threshold as his baseline. Given the choice between the riding crop, the single-tailed whip, and the nine-tailed whip, he ended up choosing the single-tailed whip, hoping it wasn't the wrong choice.

"Good," Sylas said quietly, setting the other tools aside and uncoiling the whip. He stepped back out of Percy's line of sight, and a moment later, the first strike landed, tracing a line of fire over Percy's shoulders.

It was a first infraction; Sylas gave him ten licks of the whip, each one burning in what felt like the icy chill of the room. By the end, Percy had stopped trying to keep back his cries and was concentrating on just keeping on his feet, resting his forehead against his forearms against the post and gasping for breath.

He barely realised when Sylas was done; his back was on fire, and the lack of the _impact_ of the whip went unnoticed amongst the rest of the pain. Sylas untied his wrists and, when Percy's knees buckled, hauled him over his shoulder to avoid touching his back, carrying him back to Percy's suite and putting him face-down on the bed.

"Stay still," he said, his voice still quiet. Percy didn't disobey; he couldn't think enough to disobey right now, his mind too occupied with the pain. Sylas was gone for a few moments, returning to start tending to his back. Percy flinched every time the cool cloth Sylas was using touched his raw skin, but he knew that healing often came with pain, and he didn't protest. Eventually, Sylas murmured, "You won't go where you're not supposed to again, will you, Percival?"

"No," Percy mumbled into the pillow. "No, Sylas. I won't."

For a couple of days, Delilah insisted that he take it easy while his back and shoulders healed, and then he returned to work, throwing himself into it with a vengeance. The work for Sylas and Delilah came first, of course, but there was time for other work - offerings for the Briarwoods, proof that he appreciated the things they provided for him. A delicate singing bird that, when properly wound and prepared with a thimble of water, would release a vaporised gas - a delicate way out of an uncomfortable situation if fighting proved to be unwise. An elegant timepiece that, when properly calibrated, kept exact track of sunset and sunrise.

And the presence kept watch. Four months after Winter's Crest, it made itself known.

His dreams were always vivid these days; that wasn't new. They were often nightmares, so dreaming that he was back in the cells wasn't a surprise, or even particularly novel. What was new, though, was the humanoid being sitting across from him in the cell, cross-legged and curious, watching him with its head tilted to one side. It was made entirely of smoke; Percy could see the stones of the cells through its chest. Its face reminded him of a plague doctor's mask, long-beaked and eerie.

 _"Hello,"_ it said, its voice oddly layered, like multiple people speaking at the same time, and buzzing slightly at the edges. _"You've been calling out."_

"Who are you?" Percy asked. As was so often the case in these dreams, his body was bruised and beaten, but he didn't feel any _real_ pain from it, not in the dream. There had been other people in his dreams before, but he'd never got the sense that they were _really_ other people, the way he did with this one.

 _"You've been calling out,"_ the being said again, its eyes flickering dark in its face. _"Maybe not consciously, but your mind cries out for help. You don't like being broken."_

Percy flinched. "I'm not broken."

The words fell hollow even as he said them. He might fool himself while he was awake, but compartmentalisation, denial, the masks that he put up - they all fell away when his subconscious was the one behind the reins. The being gave him a knowing look, and he fell silent.

 _"You're not the only one,"_ the being scolded gently. _"There are so many broken people out there, Percival. So many people who couldn't defend themselves from the world, or protect the people they love. Most of them don't get the chance to do anything about it."_

"But you're here to offer me that chance." He said it, rather than asked it, and his tone was flat. "What's the price?"

Nothing came without a price, after all. He'd learned that in three hard years with Sylas and Delilah. And now something was coming to him, offering him - what? To turn back time?

Seeming to read his mind, the being chuckled. _"I can't make it not have happened, Percival. We don't work like that. But I can help you learn to protect yourself from being hurt again."_

Percy narrowed his eyes. " _What's the price_?"

 _Flash_. They weren't in the cell; they were in the room he'd been kept in, after he'd been hurt. Ripley was there, standing over him, wielding her instruments of torture.

The being watched impassively while the scenes played out, Ripley pulling Percy apart as much as she was able. Percy had had these dreams before, and sometimes he'd been able to pull himself out of them, but not this time. This time, he was there until Ripley left and the smoke being let out a quiet sound that Percy couldn't quite decipher.

The scene changed, to the room where he'd woken after the aborted escape, weak and vulnerable, where Delilah had worked on him for months. It changed again, to the Sun Tree and its ghastly decoration. Again, to the room where Sylas had whipped Percy, the tableau frozen with Sylas mid-strike, his expression one of intense determination, but not _enjoyment_.

The smoke being made a quiet sound of interest. _"You'd rather more of this than talking to me?"_ it asked. _"I'm up-front, at least. I'll tell you exactly what I want."_

"Fine," Percy spat. "What do you want, and what's the price?"

The being chuckled. _"Always the price. All right. I want you to make the things I show you how to make. The price is that you **make the things I show you how to make**."_

It was too easy. "What's in it for you? Why help me now?"

 _"I have my reasons."_ It looked past Percy, and he craned his head around, shivering when he saw Sylas, frozen in the act of drawing the whip back. It was bloody by the end of this little exercise, Percy knew. The scars were still visible on his back, for all the care the Briarwoods had taken tending to the wounds once Sylas was done; this was something they hadn't called Keeper Yennin in to deal with. He had to heal from his punishments without divine assistance.

_"You want to be able to protect yourself," _the being said silkily. _"Protect the people you love."___

__Percy let out a choked laugh. "There's nobody I love alive anymore."_ _

___"Perhaps. But the point stands," _the being pointed out. _"I can give you tools to help you feel strong again."___ _ _

____The words resonated more than Percy wanted to admit. He'd spent so long feeling helpless that the notion of feeling _strong_ again, in a way he hadn't since he'd been a headstrong seventeen-year-old who thought he knew everything, was too seductive to resist._ _ _ _

____"All right," he whispered. "Tell me what to do."_ _ _ _

____The room disappeared, and Percy was floating in space. The smoke being floated in front of him, drawing images in the air with quick, efficient movements; the images sank into Percy's mind, and he nodded, seeing how he could combine chemistry and clockwork and metalwork to create the weapons that the being was showing him._ _ _ _

____And they were equalisers. Sylas and Delilah had to get close to lay a charm effect on someone; most of Delilah's magic was close quarters, or at least short-range. Not that he intended to use the weapons on them, he hurried to assure himself. But there would be other people _like_ them out there, and he might need to defend Sylas and Delilah from them. That was a good enough reason, surely._ _ _ _

____The first weapon that the being showed him was smaller, easily held in one hand, able to carry six small projectiles. The second weapon, the one that would take time to assemble and require larger projectiles, could take out an enemy from a distance._ _ _ _

____Ripley would never see him coming._ _ _ _

_____"Good,"_ the being whispered, as the plans sank into his mind. _"Make them. Show them to the world. Be strong."__ _ _ _

____When he woke, Percy went to his workrooms to see what he had and what he'd need._ _ _ _

____The metals weren't a problem, and neither were most of the workings of the devices. The black powder, though - that was a difficulty. Sylas and Delilah indulged him in most of his requests, but he'd have to broach the notion of bringing him black powder carefully. It was a by-product of mining; how could he explain wanting it to the Briarwoods?_ _ _ _

____Eventually, he slipped it in with a list of other chemicals that he needed for the excavation project and hoped for the best._ _ _ _

____At dinner a few days later, Delilah said idly, "Your latest chemical list was a bit odd, Percival. What on earth is black powder going to be good for?"_ _ _ _

____Lying didn't come easy, but he managed. "I'm trying some new chemical compositions to see if they refine the whitestone more efficiently," he said, forcing his voice to stay as calm and easy as Delilah's had been. "It might not work, but what can it cost to try? A bit of gold for the powder, and an hour to make the formula. I can leave it to see how quickly it refines the whitestone while I make another batch of the current formula."_ _ _ _

____Delilah and Sylas exchanged a glance, but Delilah nodded and said, "That sounds reasonable. You really do come up with the most inventive ideas, Percival."_ _ _ _

____He gave her a smile and returned to his meal, hoping that he'd avoided suspicion. And when Delilah didn't question his requests again, and neither of them mentioned the black powder again, he seemed to be safe._ _ _ _

____When he was twenty-one, they had another intimate dinner, like the one they'd had when he was nineteen. He often joined them for dinner anyway, since Delilah liked it, but this had been a specific request, and Delilah had asked him to dress specially for it. He'd floundered for a moment, in front of his wardrobe, but found something that seemed suitable._ _ _ _

____When the servants had cleared the table, Delilah said, "Percival, Sylas and I think it's about time we brought you into the family properly."_ _ _ _

____Percy blinked at her, thrown. "What do you mean?"_ _ _ _

____"You've regained your strength," Sylas said. His voice was soft and almost seductive, and it made Percy shiver. He felt trapped in his chair as Sylas got to his feet, like a fly on in a web, and somehow felt unable to do anything but watch as Sylas stalked closer. Delilah got to her feet as well, moving just a step behind her husband, one hand up on his shoulder like she was taking part in his stalking._ _ _ _

____"You've gained back the weight you lost," Sylas added, coming to a halt beside and slightly behind Percy's chair. Percy could see the bulk of him out of the corner of his eye, and couldn't manage to turn enough to look at him properly. Fingers trailed along his jaw, and Percy couldn't tell whether they belonged to Sylas or Delilah. They tilted his chin up, and Percy shuddered._ _ _ _

____"Percival, dear," Delilah said softly, as fingers stroked through his hair, ludicrously soothing. "Don't be afraid. It's just a little bit of pain, only for a moment. Sylas isn't going to hurt you."_ _ _ _

____"Be calm," Sylas instructed, and Percy felt that odd little intrusion in his mind that he'd felt when Sylas had visited him in the cells. It was tempting to give in, to take the lifeline that Sylas was offering him, but he couldn't bring himself to give up that much control. He'd seen other people under the effects of Sylas's charm, and the thought of being that docile frightened him._ _ _ _

____The fingers on his jaw tilted his head up and back, baring his throat, and Sylas bent over him on one side. Delilah moved to the other side, still stroking Percy's hair, her other hand reaching up to rest on the side of his throat that Sylas wasn't at, as though she wanted to be involved on as intimate a level as she could._ _ _ _

____"I don't want to be-" he began, before cutting himself off, unable to directly gainsay something they wanted._ _ _ _

____Beside him, Sylas chuckled, the sound vibrating through his lips against Percy's neck, and said, "Don't want to be a vampire? Don't worry, Percival, I don't want you to be one. At least, not yet. Twenty-one is too young. Eternal youth always sounds so enticing, but eternal prime of life is even better."_ _ _ _

____He wished he had one of his guns. Not that he could shoot Sylas or Delilah, but maybe it would make him feel better. They were only prototypes, though, not ready for proper use, and he had to keep them hidden in his workrooms. He felt guilty about hiding them, but he wasn't sure the Briarwoods would approve of them. They liked to do things personally._ _ _ _

____That was what he told himself, anyway._ _ _ _

____Delilah was wrong; it was a lot more than _a bit_ of pain. When Sylas bit down, sharp pain flashed through Percy, followed by a cold rush that spread through his throat and down into his chest. With the Briarwoods on either side of him, there was nowhere to escape, and he found himself clutching at the heavy arms of the chair, biting his lip as Sylas drank._ _ _ _

____"You're doing so well," Delilah murmured, pressing a gentle kiss to Percy's temple. "Just a little longer, dear, and you'll be properly part of our family."_ _ _ _

____When Sylas pulled back, Delilah took his place on Percy's left side, taking out an elegantly-monogrammed handkerchief and pressing it to the throbbing bite-mark. Sylas moved to lounge in the chair next to Percy, saying, "It takes a lot more than just one taste to make someone a vampire, Percival, never fear. I'll only do it when you ask me to."_ _ _ _

____In the privacy of his own mind, Percy promised himself fiercely that he'd _never_ ask Sylas to make him a vampire, even if the alternative was death._ _ _ _

____"We celebrate anniversaries this way," Delilah told him, still delicately cleaning his throat of any spilled drops of blood. "Birthdays, special events, things that require a _special_ sort of marking of the occasion."_ _ _ _

____Percy wondered if they celebrated the de Rolos' murder with a more intimate blood-letting. He remained silent, and Delilah kissed his temple again, straightening up and going over to Sylas, who said, "I won't drink from you except on those occasions. You're worth far more than just being a meal."_ _ _ _

____Later, inspecting the bite in the mirror in his room, Percy had to admit that it could have been worse. The bite was bad, but if Sylas was telling the truth - and there was no reason for him not to be - at least it wasn't going to turn him into a vampire._ _ _ _

____Trouble brewed, that year. Percy heard the servants and guards talking about it; strangers from Emon, poking their noses into things. They never found much, and Percy was pretty sure they never found their way back home, either, but Sylas and Delilah seemed irritated by the interruption to their work, and they had several long discussions about what to do about it. And one evening, not long after they'd "celebrated" Percy's twenty-second birthday with another bite that was still lividly bruised on his throat, they told Percy that they were leaving for a little while on business._ _ _ _

____Going to Emon._ _ _ _


	4. Forgetting all the hurt inside you've learned to hide so well

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cassandra begins to find a home with Vox Machina. And then the Briarwoods come to Emon and wreck everything, as they do.
> 
> Content notes for this chapter: canon-typical violence, discussion (but no depiction) of rape.

Cassandra had assumed that Vex'ahlia and Vax'ildan were travelling, together but alone. They were obviously twins, from their markedly similar appearances to the way their voices rose and fell together as they talked quietly when Cassandra woke the next morning, a cadence that reminded her painfully of the way Whitney and Oliver used to talk together, shutting out the rest of the world. She'd laid there listening to them talk, just out of earshot enough that she couldn't make out the words, too tired to try to get up.

It wasn't the lassitude that she remembered from the days immediately following her escape from the Briarwoods, at least; it was just the fatigue and weakness that came from having nearly starved to death. When they brought in a small gnome woman with gentle eyes and firm hands to look at her, she realised that they were worried that they'd saved her from the cell just to watch her die. Pike introduced herself as a cleric of Sarenrae and poured a few healing spells into her, and then sat back on her heels, puffing out her lips in a sigh.

"It's okay," Cassandra said quietly, giving Pike a tired smile. "Healing spells can't fix everything."

"I'm afraid not." Pike's answering smile was rueful. "Vex and Vax haven't quite worked that out yet. Healing magic still seems pretty miraculous to them."

"But it won't fix dehydration or starvation," Cassandra finished for her. "Not until either of us have a lot more experience with it. It's okay. I'll get better with some time and rest."

"Well, we can give you that," Pike said cheerfully. "We're in between jobs right now, so we can all rest up a bit."

Cassandra pondered that, and then asked, " _We_?"

"Oh, well." Pike shrugged a little, suddenly looking uncomfortable. "Vex and Vax didn't want to crowd you with all of us all at once, and Scanlan and Tiberius can be a bit much sometimes, and Grog means well but he's _big_ , so..."

"Big for you or big for me?" Cassandra asked curiously, and Pike laughed, the merriment sounding natural to her.

"Oh, big for _anyone_. You know what a goliath is?"

Cassandra nodded. She hadn't _met_ any - Whitestone was isolated, and they hadn't tended to get many of the more far-ranging races joining them - but she'd read enough to know what they were. She could envision the tall, grey-skinned man that Pike went on to describe, huge and boisterous and cheerful, and she could understand why the twins had thought it might be best to keep that introduction until later. He didn't sound restful for a convalescent.

As the days ticked by and her strength slowly returned, though, she noticed that her introductions were limited to Pike and Keyleth, the red-haired druid. Cassandra hadn't met many other druids, and she was curious about how Keyleth's magic, as divine as Cassandra's and Pike's, differed from theirs, but as Pike and Keyleth spelled Vex's stints tending to Cassandra, and as Cassandra noted that while Vax helped Vex, he avoided touching Cassandra, she began to suspect that her state when they'd found her, stripped down to a rust-splotched gambeson and beaten nearly bloody, had made them suspect things had gone down a different route than they had.

She appreciated the concern, and their attempts to avoid frightening her with the presence of men in the event that she _had_ been hurt in that way, but finding a way to tell them it wasn't necessary was going to be awkward.

Eventually, she brought it up with Pike. She'd considered mentioning it to Keyleth, but some subtle probing had revealed a dreadful lack of worldly knowledge on _that_ front; Cassandra didn't want to talk to someone so innocent about either the concept of rape, the fact that her comrades suspected she'd _been_ raped, or the fact that she _hadn't_ and needed them to know that. Let Keyleth keep that bit of her innocence for as long as she could.

Pike, though, seemed worldlier. She talked without blushes about Grog accompanying Scanlan to brothels, at least. So when she came in to relieve Vex, who'd been sitting with Cassandra in case she needed anything, Cassandra waited until the door closed behind Vex and said bluntly, "I need you to tell Vex and Vax that they don't need to tread on eggshells around me about men."

"Oh." Pike came to the side of the bed and sat down. "You know what they're afraid of?"

"They think I was raped." Cassandra made a face. "I don't blame them. It was an awful place they found me. But it really wasn't like that. They beat me and left me to starve to death, and I have worse scars than that."

"Yes, I noticed," Pike said quietly, reaching out to gently touch Cassandra's wrist. "I can talk to Vex and Vax for you, if you want. If you want to talk about those other scars..."

She trailed off. Cassandra swallowed heavily, a lump forming in her throat, and she managed to say, "I don't know. Maybe sometime."

"The offer will wait." Pike patted her wrist again. "How does a bath sound?"

Cassandra let out a shaky laugh. "Fantastic. I want to make a good impression on the rest of your friends."

Vex and Vax didn't mention their suspicions again, and neither did Cassandra, but the next person to bring her meal up was another little gnome, the Scanlan that Pike and Keyleth had mentioned. He was older than Cassandra had expected - Vex, Vax, Keyleth, and Pike were all pretty young for their races, whereas Scanlan had the air of someone who'd seen at least a few more decades than any of the rest of them. But his smile was friendly as he set the tray down on the bedside table, and he used a bit of magic, conjured with a whistled note, to bring over some pillows to help prop Cassandra up so she could eat.

"So you're our mystery lady," he said cheerfully, settling the tray in her lap once she was sitting up. "The twins have been fussing over you like mother hens. I don't see what they're so worried about; you don't look nearly dead to me at _all_. A quarter dead at the very most."

Despite herself, Cassandra chuckled. Keyleth and Pike had both said that Scanlan liked joking, and Cassandra had thought that would grate on her, but she was startled to find that she appreciated the little injections of humour.

"I don't know about you, but I hate eating while someone sits there and watches me," Scanlan remarked. "Do you mind if I play a bit?"

Startled again, Cassandra shook her head. "No, not at all."

He took out a conical instrument and began to play softly. Cassandra paused for a moment to listen, tilting her head. It was some sort of woodwind, and he played it with the skill that only a trained musician could display. With his attention fixed on the music, she was able to concentrate on eating without feeling awkward about eating in front of someone who _wasn't_.

It was more than just music, though. She could feel the same sort of restful magic settling around her that she felt when she used her lay on hands ability. He wasn't actively healing her, but she could tell that he was doing _something_ to let her natural healing work faster. After he left, she dozed, and when Vex came back upstairs a few hours, she looked closely at Cassandra and said, her tone a little surprised, "You're looking much better tonight."

"Maybe there's something to music being restful," Cassandra suggested. "I'd like to go downstairs tomorrow, I think. I'm getting tired of lying around in bed."

Vex nodded. "If you feel up to it, that sounds like a good step."

As she drifted off to sleep that night, she could hear conversation from the next room, the adjoining door left ajar so that they could hear her if she called out. She picked out the voices the recognised, and a few besides, two male voices that she hadn't heard yet - Grog and Tiberius, she reminded herself. The conversation was quiet, so as not to disturb her, but she had keen hearing and she couldn't help overhearing her name.

"-old do you think Cass is?"

That was Vex. Cassandra winced; she'd hoped to avoid that question for a while. Keyleth, Pike, and the twins had struck her as young, but not as young, for their race, as _she_ was, and she was concerned that they'd make her relative youth a _thing_.

Maybe she'd get lucky and they'd be bad at estimating human age. Maybe the white in her hair and the scars on her face would trick them.

Of course, she'd forgotten that clerics and druids tended to be wiser than most, and Pike's reply put that hope to rest.

"Seventeen. Maybe eighteen."

There was a silence, and then Vax said quietly, "Not _that_ young."

"She has new stretch marks from her adolescent growth," Pike said, her tone clinical. "Those usually fade after a while, especially when they're as minimal as hers. She's tall for a human woman, but she's still got a baby face when you look past the scars."

"But her hair-"

"Um, well," Keyleth interrupted Vex. "I've seen trauma do that to people before. One of the Air Ashari had a streak of white when he was twenty-two because he'd been hit in the head badly and didn't get to a healer quickly enough."

Another silence. Cassandra didn't mind them talking about her like that, although some people might have. It came from a place of concern, and she could appreciate that.

Keeping her eyes open was difficult; she was tired, still healing, and while she didn't mind the others talking about her the way they were, it wasn't interesting enough to stay awake for. She knew she was damaged, she knew what her trauma was, and she'd never felt the need to scrutinise it or wail about how she was too young to be so scarred. The world didn't care about youth, or about justice unless someone _in_ the world decided to care. Wasn't that why she'd decided to become a paladin to begin with?

The stairs felt daunting the next morning, but with Vex on one side and Vax on the other, she made it down to the common room, where Scanlan, Keyleth, and Pike were waiting with the huge, grey-skinned man who must be Grog, who Cassandra felt almost as though she knew by now from the stories Pike had told her, and a red-scaled dragonborn who she recalled must be Tiberius Stormwind.

He verified that by bouncing up and offering his hand as they approached, chirping, "Hello! I'm Tiberius Stormwind of Draconia!"

Bemused, she shook his hand and sat down at the table, glancing up at Grog, who was giving her a scrutinising look. He turned an accusing glare to the twins and said, "You said she was sick. She doesn't look sick."

"I was sick," Cassandra said, heading off the obvious argument. "I'm doing better now."

Grog considered that, and then offered her a tankard that had been sitting spare. It was early for drinking, by Cassandra's usual habits, but she accepted it and drained half of the ale, and Grog's expression split into a bright grin.

It was an odd group. But she'd met worse.

Slowly and strangely, they became something like a family. Cassandra kept expecting them to ask her when she was planning to leave, but they never did. They just took it for granted that she was one of them now. Vex divvied up their loot and included Cassandra without hesitation - at least, without any more hesitation than was usual for her, according to the teasing from Vax and Scanlan. Grog seemed to have decided that she could be counted with Pike as one of the physically stronger fighters and offered to help her get to fighting fitness; even after her strength returned, he'd volunteer to be her sparring partner. Fighting with one partner so much smaller and one so much larger was an interesting experience, one that Cassandra quickly decided was to her benefit; it was teaching her how to be flexible in her technique.

And somehow, they became _known_. She kept thinking that perhaps this job would be the one that ended their cooperation, but it never did. They grew closer, despite her best efforts, and they developed a _reputation_. She didn't use her full name with them - she told them her name was Cassandra de Rolo, but omitted the Johanna von Musel Klossowski part - but nevertheless, her reputation grew alongside theirs.

It was a strange thing, having something that felt almost like a new family. It wasn't the same as her old family - nothing could be - but it was _nice_. It was comforting. When she and Pike and Grog sparred, it was comforting to know that the people she was letting into her heart were strong. When she watched Vex haggle over prices with merchants, it was reassuring to know that her new sister looked to the future enough to be careful of her money. She had enough of an education in history and the theoretics of arcana to be able to have interesting discussions with Tiberius by the fire when they were on watch together, and she was surprised at how close she grew with Keyleth over time. She never went into detail about what had happened to her family, but she became a shoulder to sniffle on when Keyleth was feeling particularly homesick for hers, and as the weeks ticked by, they began to talk about other things as well, an organic growth of conversation.

Cassandra wasn't used to having friends like this, but it was nice. They didn't want to be her friends because of her family or the position she could get them; they just liked her for who she was and what she'd taught herself to do.

Losing Pike shook her. She'd already lost too much family; the death of the little gnome cleric was almost more than she could bear. Even after the resurrection ritual succeeded, Cassandra felt _shaky_ in a way she hadn't in a long time, and her nightmares resurfaced. They'd been intermittent for years, but now they became frequent again, tormenting her with images of her friends - her family - being cut down in front of her eyes.

Vax, slipping through the shadows and being hurt away from them, where they couldn't find him and help him. Vex, sundered from Trinket and slaughtered when her grief made her vulnerable. Tiberius and Scanlan, easily the most foolhardy and impulsive of the group, lured into traps and murdered. Kelyeth, lured in by an appeal to her good nature and stabbed in the back. Grog, swarmed over and overwhelmed by sheer force of numbers.

Her parents, cut down by the Briarwoods. Her brothers and sisters, run through by the Briarwoods' people.

Percival, falling, with arrows in his chest, and Cassandra running before she could be sure he was dead.

She woke one night, the flickering firelight a comforting reminder that she was at a campsite with her friends, and saw Vex watching her.

"Bad dreams?" Vex asked quietly. "Or bad memories?"

Cassandra sat up, rubbing her hands through her hair, and sighed. "A bit of both. I wasn't prepared to lose Pike like that. Even if she did come back."

"I don't think any of us were." Vex hugged her knees, leaning against Trinket's shoulder. "I don't know about the others, but it brought up too much about our mother for me and Vax. I imagine it was probably the same for Scanlan and Keyleth." She let out a soft, sardonic little laugh. "Being a mother of a future member of Vox Machina is a high-risk job. I think Tiberius is the only one whose parents are both still alive and well."

"We're lucky she came back," Cassandra said morosely. "The resurrection ritual doesn't always work."

Vex's eyes widened, and she said, "Well, I'm glad Father Tristan didn't tell us that."

She was quiet for a few moments. Cassandra thought about Pike, about how her hair had changed, how angry she'd been when she was resurrected. Not angry at them; angry at herself, for not being strong enough. Cassandra could understand that sort of anger. She, more than anyone, understood why Pike had felt the need to go and train, to make herself stronger.

"Cass?"

She looked up, startled. Vex had sounded alarmingly young.

"She'll come back, right?"

Cassandra leaned over to wrap her arm around Vex's shoulder, bracketing her on the side Trinket wasn't on. Vex so rarely showed this sort of vulnerability, and Cassandra knew why she was showing it to _her_. Cassandra kept her past to herself, but it was obvious that she'd been through something bad, something that had driven her to become the paladin that she was, to become _stronger_. It wasn't that dissimilar a journey to the one that Pike was on now.

"She'll come back," Cassandra said quietly. "She needs to work out how to deal with what happened to her, but she'll come back. She loves us too much not to."

Cassandra was right; Pike returned to them in time, if a harder, angrier Pike than before. They didn't blame her for that, though. Nobody came through a combat death and subsequent resurrection ritual unchanged. They were just glad that she'd found enough of her way to be able to come back to them.

Getting the attention of Uriel Tal'dorei was unexpected and, for Cassandra, frightening. She wasn't ready to be _known_. Thankfully, her family hadn't been the sort of nobility who travelled much, and the Emperor didn't recognise her name. It was safer being a part of Vox Machina. She could just blend in and be Cass.

She didn't enjoy the Underdark. Not that any of them _enjoyed_ it, but the pervasive, heavy darkness made her think of the Briarwoods and their hold over Whitestone. She kept seeing Percival's face in the shadows of the caves they camped in, bruised and battered as he fell. Being the only one who couldn't see properly was difficult as well, but Tiberius was good about lighting things up with his light spell - too quick to do it, sometimes, with his usual lack of foresight - and she managed.

Vassalheim, oddly, felt like a vacation of sorts. It hurt, losing Pike _again_ , but it was for a good reason this time. Restoring the temple of Sarenrae was one of the noblest causes a cleric could have. Sure, running afoul of the Slayer's Take was awkward, but going on the job for them to get membership - it was _simple_. Go after the white dragon, kill the white dragon, bring back requested pieces, and their infraction would be forgiven. It was uncomplicated, and after the deranged beholder in the Underdark, Cassandra needed some uncomplicated. Seeing Grog so happy after his rematch with Kern made her forget, for a moment, her driving need for vengeance.

Finding out, when they returned from Vassalheim to their keep, that the _Briarwoods_ were going to be in Emon - _that_ was difficult to manage. It meant telling the rest of Vox Machina the truth about her past. Not that she'd ever _lied_ about her past, but she hadn't been _open_ about it.

Their response surprised her, and it shouldn't have. They wanted to help her. Of _course_ they did. They were family, weren't they?

Using the Hat of Disguise, she attended the dinner masquerading as Vax, who lurked in the background under an Invisibility spell. She didn't speak much; her voice was low for a woman, and she could ape Vax's light tenor if she tried, but not for long conversations. Besides, she was too busy holding back her rage as the Briarwoods sat at the table and prattled about how tragic her family's deaths were, spun some story about an _illness_ , lied through their teeth about having been _friends_ in the past.

Halfway through the meal, she felt a small hand on her leg, squeezing lightly, and glanced over to Scanlan, sitting beside her, who murmured, low enough that only she would hear, "Easy, Cass. We'll get them."

She was surprised he'd noticed her simmering rage - he wasn't always the most observant, after all - but he had a point. She tamped down her fury and gave him a tiny nod, reaching for her wine and taking a sip as Vex complimented Lady Briarwood's dress.

It made her skin itch, not knowing where Vax was. He wasn't keeping up enough of a running commentary to let them know what he was doing. They sat in the presence of evil; she wanted to know exactly where all her friends were.

When his voice came through the earring, not long after the Briarwoods left the dining room, gasping, " _Jenga_ ", she instinctively cast about with her divine sense, as though she could tell where the Briarwoods were even though, as far as she was aware, they were simply evil, not fiendish or celestial.

And then her senses screamed that there was a vampire upstairs, and she felt ice plummet into her stomach. She ran with the others, claiming her sword and shield from the cloakroom, and snapped, "I know where the Briarwoods are."

It would be too much of a coincidence for two different evils to be abroad in the palace. Whether the vampire was Sylas or Delilah, she was certain it was one of them.

They began to run, following her lead, until Vex cried, "She's outside the castle!" and peeled off, swiftly followed by Grog. Of course; Vex had Hunter's Marked Delilah. As the half-elf woman ran towards the exit, Cassandra reached out with her divine senses again and nodded; the sense of _undeath_ that she felt was outside the castle walls as well.

The quickest way to get there was through rooms. She ignored the flash of purple light as Scanlan cast Dimension Door, ignored the cry of Keyleth's giant eagle form and Tiberius's eager roar, and barrelled through guest rooms, ignoring surprised cries from courtiers and the snag of plush draperies on her sword. When she found a window that led outside, she set her shoulder to it and smashed it open with sheer force, driving herself out of the window and through the air.

Her landing wasn't neat or graceful, but it was solid. She could hear Vex and Grog around the corner of the palace, she could hear the patter of glass pieces around her, but her world had tunnelled down to what she could _see_.

Vax, lying motionless on the ground. Sylas standing over him, silhouetted against the moon. Delilah behind them, glaring up at the window the three of them had just leaped out of. Cassandra could see blood on Vax's neck, black in the moonlight that washed colour out of the world.

And then the world washed _red_ , and rage took her.

The fight went by in a blur. She was aware of calling on her power, using her divine smite against Sylas with all the fury she'd bottled up over the last five years. She was aware of reaching down to touch Vax's shoulder, pushing healing power into him, before following the Briarwoods as they fled.

The carriage skittered on the ice and crashed. They teleported, and she let out a scream of pure rage, deeper even than the rage Grog had entered, as her quarry were taken beyond her. Aware of movement in the carriage, she strode towards it and dragged the driver out.

He was young. Perhaps her age. He wore the face of the enemy.

She brought her foot down onto his hand, just holding for the moment, as she held her sword, awash in blood, to his throat. He stared up at her, eyes wide in terror, and gasped, "Please. Please, spare my life. What do you want?"

She let her foot crunch down. "Tell me where the de Rolos are."

The scream did nothing to soothe the icy rage sizzling along her nerves. She repeated the question, harsh and impatient, and began listing their names. Her parents. Julius. Vesper. Oliver. Whitney. Ludwig.

She'd known, already, that they were dead. Hearing it from somebody who had been in Whitestone neither helped nor hurt, and it did nothing to quell the red haze in her vision. Her foot ground down with the crunch of shattering bone, earning another scream, and she said, almost in a whisper, "You'll tell us everything you know about them."

"They'll kill me," he whispered. He looked pathetic, lying there in the rain that Keyleth had summoned, burned and bleeding from the wreck of the carriage, trembling from pain and fear. He looked too much like how Percival had looked when she'd found him in the cell beneath the castle, and couldn't have been much older, at that.

"No, they won't," she said, aware that her friends were coming up behind her, and that she was probably shocking at least some of them. Any comfort he might have derived from that assurance was chased away by her next words: "I'll make sure you stay alive as long as you're of use."

She had no patience for questioning out here, though. She brought the hilt of her sword down, knocking him out, and glanced at her friends, saying only. "I'll take him to the keep. We can question him there. And then I go to Whitestone."

Keyleth looked troubled, and Cassandra would feel bad about that later, when the cold fury receded. Vex, too, looked troubled, and so did Vax; they were used to her being cool and practical, not _this_. She would be glad, later, that Pike hadn't been there to see it.

Scanlan, though, gave a brisk nod and said, " _We_ go to Whitestone."


	5. Pretending someone else can come and save me from myself

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Vox Machina chase the Briarwoods to Whitestone, Percy deals some more with Orthax, Anna Ripley, and the upcoming conflict.

_"Percival."_

Percy knew he was dreaming. He was sitting in the Whitestone library, where he hadn't set foot for years now. He kept his movements to his rooms, bedroom and workrooms both, and the dining room these days, unwilling to risk raising Sylas's ire by going somewhere he wasn't supposed to be. He missed the library sometimes, but the servants brought him books if he asked for them. He didn't ask often. The mute sympathy in their eyes was too much to bear.

But here he sat, a book open on the reading desk in front of him, and the smoke being was there, watching him.

"Have I displeased you?" he asked quietly, keeping his eyes fixed on the book whose text made no sense to him. Dreams were like that, he knew vaguely; you could never be sure of details. A wisp of smoke crossed his field of vision, and he forced himself not to flinch. He owed the smoke being; if he'd done something to make it angry, it could go very badly for him.

_"You've done good work," _the being said silkily, its voice close to Percy's ear. _"But you're supposed to be taking your work out into the world. You're not going out. Your world is half a dozen rooms, Percival, and I require much, much more than that."___

__Percy swallowed. He'd got used to his restricted life, over the past few years, and the idea of going _outside_ , with nothing but his guns to defend himself - they were powerful weapons, and he was proud of them, but they could be taken. If they were taken, he was helpless._ _

__He was shivering, he realised, as another wisp of smoke drifted in front of his eyes._ _

___"Percival."_ He forced himself to look at the smoke being, whose head was cocked to one side, a curious attitude about it. _"What frightens you so, Percival, with such weapons in your hands?"__ _

__The smaller gun, the pepper-box, appeared on the table, the barrel bright and glinting in the sourceless dream-light. The larger, Bad News, sat just beyond it, darkly malevolent, so easily misused but so powerful when it sat in his hands._ _

__He swallowed. "They're just weapons. No matter the training, if you're disarmed, you're helpless."_ _

__His father had been an excellent swordsman. Oliver had been adept with a bow. Vesper and Julius had had the best training available to them, and had been promising students. It hadn't helped any of them when the Briarwoods had come._ _

__The smoke being sighed, but it didn't sound disappointed. It was a sigh of satisfaction, and it send a shiver down Percy's spine. He didn't know why his admission made the smoke being so satisfied, and once he'd have enjoyed hearing that sound from a superior, knowing he'd done something well, but in the last five years, he'd heard it from Ripley when she'd brought forth a scream, from Sylas when he fed. Hearing it from someone else he owed fealty to, not knowing why, terrified him._ _

___"I see."_ The being sounded thoughtful, and the smoke drifted again, as though keeping its more contained form was more difficult while it ruminated. _"There are remedies for that. The clever mage is never helpless."__ _

__"I'm not a mage." He'd considered it when he was fourteen - he had the intellect for wizardry, though not the natural talent for sorcery - but had ultimately decided he lacked the patience for the sort of rigorous study that wizards were obliged to undertake. He loved studying and researching, but he liked concrete results, and spells had struck him as a little too ephemeral, back when he'd still had impatience and naiveté._ _

___"Not a wizard or a sorcerer, no,"_ the smoke being agreed. _"Nor a music-mage or one tied to nature. But there is another way."__ _

__Percy swallowed. Magic that you didn't study for, that wasn't from the divine connection druids had with the world or the inborn spark that sorcerers had, was dangerous. He'd heard stories about people who obtained their magic from other sources - ancient weapons that spoke to them, creatures from realms beyond the mortal plane who had their own reasons for granting a speck of their power to a puny mortal. The most benign he'd heard of were still inscrutable and had their own motives, and something that taught him how to make weapons like the pepper-box and Bad News was far from benign. He'd come to terms with that a long time ago._ _

___"A minor amendment to our agreement; that's all it would take," _the being said quietly, its long, beak-like face turned towards him, black eyes burning within the smoke. _"You use the gifts I give you to bolster yourself so that you can take our work out into the world. I ask nothing more than that."___ _ _

____He should say no. He knew that this was a bad deal, that it had been a bad deal from the day he'd first made it. He wasn't stupid; he knew evil when he sat in front of it while it mouthed pretty words that made him feel better about being helpless. It sat in front of him every night at dinner, after all. It had spent a week pulling him apart while his family hung rotting on the Sun Tree._ _ _ _

____And yet. The notion of a weapon that nobody could take away was appealing. He preferred the guns, the physicality of them, but there were spells that would help. He knew enough about magical theory to know that._ _ _ _

____The smoke being waited, watching._ _ _ _

____"All right." Minutes or hours had passed since the being had made its offer. Time passed strangely in dreams; the light was constant, never-shifting, and it was impossible to track the passage of time from the shadows. He looked up to the smoke being, who had not so much as changed position, and said quietly, "Give me more to make me strong, and I'll find a way to take the guns out into the world."_ _ _ _

____The long, beaky mask distorted into something terrifyingly like a smile, and the being whispered, _"Done. And I won't even start you from step one."__ _ _ _

____When he woke, there were arcane images burning behind his eyes, and the smoke being's voice whispering, explaining what the new information in his mind was for._ _ _ _

____ _ _

____Ripley came back three days after the Briarwoods left, and when Percy walked into the main hall and stopped short seeing her, the lazy smile that crossed her face told him that she'd timed her arrival on purpose. They both danced to Sylas and Delilah's tunes, but she had always had her own agenda, and of course she would want the freedom to carry it out without being under their thumbs._ _ _ _

____He managed to avoid her for almost a day, holing up in his workshop and refusing to admit that he was _hiding_. And then a shiver of ice ran down his spine and he turned to see her in the doorway, watching him._ _ _ _

____"Delilah asked me to come back and oversee the project in her absence," she said, her gaze flicking over to his workbench. "Apparently you're not as involved as you could be."_ _ _ _

____"I do what they ask," Percy said, trying not to feel stung by the remark. The Briarwoods hadn't _asked_ him to be involved in the project beneath the castle. He hadn't wanted to know what they were doing, admittedly, and he'd been busy designing and perfecting the weapons that the smoke being had shown him. It wasn't a lack of ambition; he had plenty on his mind. He didn't like letting Ripley make him feel inadequate._ _ _ _

____She came further into the room, and Percy was uncomfortably aware that she was staying between him and the door. She moved like a stalking animal, taking in every aspect of the workroom, and then she smiled. Percy shivered. Good things never came of Anna Ripley smiling._ _ _ _

____"I was going to chide you for a lack of initiative, but you've been a busy boy, haven't you?" She approached the workbench, and Percy unconsciously took a step back, flinching as his hip hit the corner of the bench, reminding him that there was nowhere to run. There never was._ _ _ _

____Ripley picked up the incomplete pistol that he'd been tinkering with, turning it over in her hands, and murmured, "What an interesting little mind you've got, Percival. Clockwork and gears and -- is this black powder? _Explosives_?"_ _ _ _

____He swallowed. "It's a work in progress."_ _ _ _

____"Do Delilah and Sylas know about this?" She picked up a pouch of black power and watched him sharply, grinning when he paled. "I didn't think so. You've been duplicitous, Percival. What _will_ they say?"_ _ _ _

____Panic burst in his chest, and he acted on instinct. He grabbed at the magic that ran through his mind and thrust it at her._ _ _ _

____She was holding a pouch of black powder. He turned the raw magic into fire, and her hand exploded._ _ _ _

____Percy panted, staring at her, and grabbed for the magic again. He hadn't practiced this one, wanting to keep his new arcane ability under wraps and unwilling to risk that any of the servants weren't reporting to Delilah and Sylas, but the _knowledge_ was there in his mind, whispering to him in the voice of the smoke being about what he could do to protect himself. He shoved another spell at her, lacing magic into his voice as he snapped, " _Leave_."_ _ _ _

____He could see her struggle to shake off the command and fail. Still clutching the incomplete pistol in her undamaged hand, she turned and fled._ _ _ _

____He spent the next three days on tenterhooks, waiting for her to come back, but it seemed that the addition of magic and his willingness to turn it against her was enough to keep her away. He prayed that that was the case, at least, as he remained in the castle and Ripley continued to be elsewhere. Her threat of telling the Briarwoods about his guns loomed, heavy and ever-present, but without her constant presence reminding him of it, he was able to keep to his work with a minimum of discomfort._ _ _ _

____Sylas and Delilah returned to Whitestone ahead of schedule. Percy was alerted to their presence by Professor Anders coming to his workroom, where he was compounding a new chemical composition to melt down the whitestone ore, and dragging him to his feet with no explanation. Percy was used to that by now; Professor Anders had been awkward in the first few months, but by the time Percy had been released from his solitary confinement, Anders had adjusted to the situation and to his guilt over his part in it. Now he was just another member of the Briarwoods' trusted inner circle._ _ _ _

____He didn't fight as he was dragged down the corridor to the Briarwoods' chambers. When Anders shoved him through the door, Delilah was sitting on the bed, her formal dress torn and burned. Sylas was likewise burned and ravaged from some sort of fight - and he looked _hungry_._ _ _ _

____Percy didn't have time to ask what had happened. Sylas moved like a stalking animal, crossing the space between them in a heartbeat and grabbing Percy's chin to force his head back, baring his throat. Anders held his arms in an iron grip, and Sylas, his voice shaking with effort, said harshly, " _Don't fight me_."_ _ _ _

____It hurt more this time. Percy was dimly aware of Delilah getting to her feet and coming over, limping somewhat as she moved. Her hands twined into his hair, an attempt at soothing while Sylas drank and icy pain shot through Percy's body, stabbing down from his throat with his heartbeat._ _ _ _

____The other times Sylas had bitten him, it had been a short taste, little more than a mouthful. This time, he drank until Percy's vision started to turn grey at the edges. When he pulled back finally, taking out a handkerchief and delicately dabbing the blood from the corner of his lips, Delilah drew Percy over to the bed and sat down with him, pressing her own handkerchief to the bite in his neck and murmuring, "You did very well, dear. We wouldn't have brought you, but your blood is so good for him."_ _ _ _

____Sylas had said something similar a few times, that the blood of people close to him was better, somehow. Percy was fairly sure that was a placebo effect - nothing he'd read about vampires had indicated that there was anything emotional in their feeding - but he hadn't wanted to argue, and he didn't have the strength for it right now. He simply nodded mutely, letting Delilah tend to his throat while Sylas rapidly healed and collected new clothing from the closet for himself and Delilah._ _ _ _

____"Did something happen in Emon?" Percy asked finally. "Are you all right?"_ _ _ _

____"We met with some opposition," Delilah said, her voice tight with anger. "I'm afraid they're going to follow us here, dear, when we never wanted to subject you to that sort of violence. We must prepare for an assault."_ _ _ _

____Percy felt cold, but not from fear. He felt as though he'd plunged into the same icy river he'd seen Cassandra fall into, so long ago. Cold and numb and somehow distant. He was dimly aware of Delilah and Sylas exchanging a glance, but couldn't make himself wonder about why._ _ _ _

____Opposition. He couldn't think of anyone who would have both reason and wherewithal to oppose Delilah and Sylas besides his sister. De Rolos were strong._ _ _ _

____Most de Rolos were strong. He was wondering about himself, these days._ _ _ _

____But Cassandra. Fighting Delilah and Sylas, causing the sort of damage that had sent them scrambling back to Whitestone, to Percy._ _ _ _

____He didn't know if he envied her or hated her for her freedom to fight them._ _ _ _

____Eventually, Delilah took him back to his room and led him over to the bed, murmuring, "Get some rest, Percival. We'll try to keep this from hurting you, but if we ask something of you, I need you to do it right away, all right? It's for our family."_ _ _ _

____He nodded, letting her tuck the heavy blankets over him and laying still as she leaned down to press a kiss to his forehead. She was always so motherly. It was a strange juxtaposition with her behaviour with others, but he preferred it to Sylas's overbearing charisma or Ripley's cruelty._ _ _ _

____The smoke being was in his dreams again, sitting cross-legged on the end of his bed._ _ _ _

_____"It's nearly time, Percival."_ It had one of his guns in its hands, examining the barrel. _"And I need some information. Who do you hate?"__ _ _ _

____Percy stared at it, for a moment struck dumb by the question. It cocked its head at him, and he swallowed. It was an easy thing to answer, at least._ _ _ _

____"Dr Ripley." His voice barely sounded like his own. "Professor Anders." His mind flashed to the night his family had been murdered; the captain of the guard had stood by idly while the Briarwoods did their work. "Sir Kerrion Stonefell."_ _ _ _

____The smoke being remained silent, watching. Percy licked his dry lips, unable to look away from it._ _ _ _

____"Sylas Briarwood."_ _ _ _

____It came out in a whisper, feeling like blasphemy. And the smoke being still watched._ _ _ _

____Finally, barely audible, Percy whispered, "Delilah Briarwood."_ _ _ _

____The beak-mask distorted again in that odd not-smile, and the smoke being said quietly, _"Take them for me. You'll understand when you get to work next."__ _ _ _

____When he woke, Percy went to his workroom, finding the guns in the secret compartment he'd made for them. Delilah and Sylas kept out of his workroom and allowed him to forbid the servants entry, but he hadn't wanted to take chances._ _ _ _

____The pepper-box's barrels glinted oddly, and he picked it up to examine them. On each of five of the six barrels, one of the names that he'd said to the smoke being was etched, like a promise._ _ _ _

____He shivered and set the gun back down, but something warm settled in his stomach. It was a promise, that one day he'd have proven himself stronger than they had made him._ _ _ _

____The attack came sooner than they'd reckoned for. He was working in the workroom when Anders came for him again, snapping, "They're here. Sylas and Delilah are going below. Cooperate."_ _ _ _

____He didn't like doing what Anders said, but Anders was a trusted member of Sylas and Delilah's inner circle; disobeying him would be almost as stupid as disobeying them directly. He let Anders tow him through the castle to one of the studies, hearing the distant sounds of combat in the near vicinity. And when Anders held a knife to his throat, staring at the door as though he expected all the forces of the hells to come bursting through it, he didn't fight._ _ _ _

____The smoke being had said it was nearly time. Percy trusted that more than he trusted his own instincts right now._ _ _ _

____When the dark-haired half-elf broke into the room, Percy heard Anders murmur an incantation as a trio of daggers came flying through the air towards them. Percy was tall enough to offer some measure of protection for Anders, who stood behind him with a hand fisted in Percy's hair, but the half-elf's aim was spectacular. The first two daggers hit home, one hitting deep in Anders's eye and the second hitting him hard in the shoulder._ _ _ _

____The smoke demon had said it was time. Percy was obligated to take his work out into the world._ _ _ _

____And Delilah and Sylas weren't there to tell him no._ _ _ _

____" _They know you're here,_ " he cried, his head jerking back as Anders stumbled back from the impact of the daggers, his hand still tight in Percy's hair. Anders swore, whether because of what Percy had said or because of the pain, Percy wasn't sure; regardless, the knife at his throat bit, cutting deep enough to send a sheet of blood streaming down his chest, and Anders shoved him away to land on his hands and knees._ _ _ _

____The half-elf barrelled in and set off one of the traps. He seemed to shrug it off and sank a third dagger into Anders. Percy couldn't focus on the fight; the gash across his throat made it hard to breathe, and his vision tunnelled in, refusing to let him concentrate on anything but the pain and the growing tightness in his chest._ _ _ _

____He could hear the animated armour lumbering forward. He could hear Professor Anders chanting an arcane incantation, and the half-elf seemed to shrug it off again, daggers flying. The clash of combat was deafening, and Percy barely managed to scramble out of the way, pressing one hand to his throat, the slick of blood between his fingers making his gut roil._ _ _ _

____Things got complicated then, as the noise of more combatants sounded in the corridors right outside. The half-elf skidded to his knees beside Percy and uncorked a healing potion, getting it into him with more haste than grace, and there was an odd sensation as it flowed down his throat; a shimmer, almost, as though a stain had been washed away. He suddenly became able to breathe, and the blood that had been coating his hands vanished._ _ _ _

____It was still difficult to focus, and he still felt lightheaded from lack of breath, but his own knowledge of magic made it clear what Anders had done. Somehow, he'd got into Percy's head enough to make him believe the illusion that he'd cast to fool the intruders._ _ _ _

____"Bastard," he whispered, still slumped on the floor where the half-elf had left him to return to the fight._ _ _ _

____A red-haired half-elf burst into the room then and, taking one look at Percy, directed a burst of divine energy towards him. He could feel the healing magic sink into him, reminding him of Keeper Yennin with a sudden ferocity that brought tears to his eyes, and he couldn't quite form the words to tell her that it was all right, that he wasn't as hurt as he seemed, that it was magic tricks to keep them off-balance and to use up their healing resources._ _ _ _

____He scuttled back, out of the way, as the fight continued, and desperately felt for where he'd stashed the pepper-box in his shirt. It was still there. He didn't want to fire into such a close melee, not with the risk that the Briarwoods might still find out, but he wanted the reassurance that he _had_ it._ _ _ _

____And then Cassandra ran into the room, and everything tunnelled into that one figure, taller than he remembered, broader, wearing chain mail and wielding a bright longsword, white-streaked brown hair pulled back into a tight, sensible braid that kept it out of her face as she looked at him, looked at Anders, and snapped, "No more."_ _ _ _

____She strode towards Anders, lifting her sword, and Percy felt a burst of panic within him again. She was going to kill Anders. She was going to take _his_ kill. He'd promised. He fumbled in his shirt for the gun, drawing it out with a hand that still shook, and managed to fire._ _ _ _

____Anders fell, and the name etched into the barrel shimmered briefly before it smoothed out. Cassandra stared at him, a dreadful knowledge in her eyes, and then turned her attention back to the fight, still raging on, with the animated armour._ _ _ _

____The intruders subdued the armour finally, and tended to their wounds. They gave him sidelong glances as he stared at Cassandra, trying to recognise his little sister in the hard-faced woman standing there, conscious of her undergoing the same struggle as she stared at him. Joy and hate wrestled with each other as he looked at her._ _ _ _

____She didn't look like the last five years had been _easy_. But they hadn't been _his_ last five years._ _ _ _

____"I'm so sorry," Cassandra said quietly. "I'm so sorry I left you, Percy. I didn't know you'd survived."_ _ _ _

____He kept staring at her. He'd known she was alive, but knowing and _seeing_ were two different things. She reached up to touch his hair, and he kept himself from flinching back, and she smiled a mirthless smile._ _ _ _

____"It seems like we've both survived a lot."_ _ _ _

____"I'm all right," he whispered, lying to himself. Lying again. "I'm good."_ _ _ _

____"We're going to put an end to the Briarwoods tonight," Cassandra said firmly. "We're going to stop what they're doing beneath the city and end them."_ _ _ _

____"I know where they are," he said, his voice quiet. "I can take you."_ _ _ _

____He hadn't been a part of the excavation, but he knew where it was. He could lead them there._ _ _ _

____To where Delilah and Sylas waited. And he had absolutely no idea what he was going to do._ _ _ _


End file.
